A radio message from Max Verstappen displayed during yesterday’s Spanish Grand Prix has prompted confusion among fans.
A graphic displayed on lap 63 of the race quoted Verstappen saying “he needs to give the position back.” Verstappen was running behind Charles Leclerc at the time and had complained the Ferrari driver had made contact when overtaking him two laps earlier.No audio of Verstappen speaking these words was broadcast on the world television feed, which is not unusual. However fans who watched Verstappen’s onboard feed were surprised to discover no sign of the message either and queried the discrepancy on social media.
Formula One Management may misinterpret messages at times, but creating one would obviously be a different matter entirely, and there’s no reason to believe that was the case here.
There have been previous cases of drivers’ messages being heard on the world feed but not on their onboard feed. This is because messages are played and censored differently on the two broadcasts.
But on the onboard drivers’ messages are played in close to real-time. Instead of editing them, if FOM are concerned a driver may be about to say something they do not wish to broadcast, the communications are simply silenced.
FOM began doing this in order to avoid broadcasting potentially distressing audio if a driver suffers a heavy crash. However it also silences their radio if a driver becomes so agitated there is a concern they may say something particularly inflammatory.
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This concern pre-dates FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s notorious clampdown on drivers swearing. One of the first such cases occured at the 2023 Australian Grand Prix when an unhappy Carlos Sainz Jnr complained bitterly to Ferrari’s Ricardo Adami and Laurent Mekies about a penalty. Much of his commentary was played on the world feed, but not on his onboard channel:
| Lap: 57/58 | |
| Adami | We have five seconds penalty |
| Sainz | No, it cannot be, Ricky. They need to wait until the race is finished and analyse the incident with me. They need to wait. It’s only 10 minutes left ’til I come in the stewards room and explain it. |
| Adami | Yeah… |
| Sainz | He said that we’re going to finish P3. And then we’re going to finish P4. Why do you need to put me out of the points? It is unacceptable. I cannot accept this. It’s impossible. It’s so unfair. It’s a racing incident, lap one. |
| Lap: 58/58 | |
| Mekies | It’s clear, Carlos. It’s clear. Let’s finish that race, and we’ll discuss here. |
| Sainz | But let me at least discuss with the stewards in the stewards’ room. |
| Mekies | Of course we’ll go and see them, just after you get out of the car. |
However, as noted previously, FOM’s power to essentially hide drivers’ radio messages has potential implications for the competition. The FIA stewards often rely on radio communications for decision-making, as in the case of Russell’s penalty in Monaco last week.
Assuming Verstappen made this comment, it likely occured during a two-minute spell during which no comments from him or race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase were heard on his onboard channel. Red Bull’s rivals may like to know whether Verstappen said anything else during that time which FOM kept off his onboard feed.
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World television feed
| Lap: 61 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Mate, he just rammed into me! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | He did the same, that’s a penalty. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Charles just rammed into me on the straight. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lambiase | Copy that Max. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lap: 62 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lap: 63 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Text message, no audio He needs to give the position back. |
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Verstappen onboard
| Lap: 61/66 VER: 1’18.862 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Pit straight Fuck! Mate, he just rammed into me! |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Verstappen leaves the track at turn one as Russell tries to pass him He did the same, that’s a penalty. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Charles just rammed into me on the straight. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lambiase | Copy that Max. Mode six when you can. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lap: 62/66 VER: 1’17.019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lambiase | Russell 0.4. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lap: 63/66 VER: 1’17.608 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lambiase | Max, can you let Russell through, please? Let Russell through. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | What? I was ahead! Mate, what the fuck? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lambiase | My advice is to let him through. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verstappen | Mate I was ahead, he just rammed me off the road! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lambiase | But that’s the rules. That’s the rules we have to play with. It’s a shame, but that’s the rules. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2025 Spanish Grand Prix
- “I tried to push him in the marbles”: Leclerc’s radio sheds light on Verstappen clash
- Alonso now has the second-longest run of win-less starts by any F1 driver
- “The worst it’s ever been”: Hamilton’s front wing headaches during Spanish GP
- Red Bull endured “sobering” weekend after pinning hopes on rule change – Marko
- “Does it matter” if a driver deliberately crashes into a rival? There’s only one answer
Osnola
2nd June 2025, 11:29
Fom creating news out of nothing is nothing new….
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
2nd June 2025, 12:32
Find out next March, only on Drive To Survive, season one too many.
rprp
2nd June 2025, 12:37
There, FTFY.
Valias (@valias)
2nd June 2025, 14:37
Nailed it
Ferdi
2nd June 2025, 12:40
What I find worrying (next to Max losing his temper) is that Leclerc goes unpunished for one of the most dangerous things anyone can do: hit another car while at top speed. FIA seems to be favouring some. That is proper mismanagement and should cost the head of the FIA his job imho.
Jason Blankenship (@jblank)
2nd June 2025, 13:18
Are you kidding me? Leclerc did absolutely nothing wrong…..NOTHING, nothing at all. The contact was initiated by Max on the straight.
Osnola
2nd June 2025, 15:35
Even lec a knowledges he moved and max did not.
So try to keep your eyes open when viewing.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
2nd June 2025, 16:34
These 2 have been posting this all day on every article. Everyone knows you can move across as long as you leave a cars width. I say everyone, everyone bar these 2
osnola
2nd June 2025, 19:46
You do know that is total and utter nonsense…oh wait: no you do not..
Sigh..
But to educate you… if there is a car next to you and you steer in that direction. There is no rule in the world that states you should move away. Lex wanted to stay away form the dirty side of the track and doing so he hit Ver.
Charles
2nd June 2025, 21:35
You absolutely right. But the narrative seems to be that Max is the bad guy. Max did something truly wrong, but Lec was the true mad man. You have to understand racing to know how dangerous his move was..
Mooa42
3rd June 2025, 9:07
@osnola
Correct, but there is also no rule to say you can’t move across either, in fact you can return to the racing line after an overtake.
Hence the reason it was deemed a racing incident.
This type of move is seen all the time, most dramatically at the start of a race when drivers dart across the track to protect the corner, and when drivers claim a corner. The other car doesn’t have to move, like Max chose not to, and if they hit, it would be a racing incident. Just like Perez and Sainz in Baku 2024.
So Charles and Max were both correct. If Max had no room to go left, or if Charles had steered towards Max without giving time for Max to react then it might have been a different story. Both drivers could have avoided the contact, but both chose not to.
Ferdi
4th June 2025, 13:12
And you say this because of what exactly? Indoctrination? Even Leclerc himself said he made the move. I suggest watching Peter Windsor analysis of the race. If anything was confirmed again it is the total incompetence of Race Control.
Riccard
2nd June 2025, 13:35
It seems to be a racing incident: Max had previously moved a little right to push Charles onto the dirty part of the track; Charles moved a little left to get back to the good bit; neither pulled out (despite Charles having his nose in front) and then they touched.
Standard practice when both drivers contributed to a collision is not to penalise either. You could penalise both, but that would be really unusual and doesn’t seem justified here. If you were only going to penalise one, I’d find it hard to reasonably say which.
Conclusion from the stewards (correctly in my mind): no action.
Moshambles (@moshambles)
3rd June 2025, 8:28
What? Look at the incident again. They both move into each other. It’s so obviously a racing incident which didn’t impact either driver
gDog (@gdog)
2nd June 2025, 12:58
What did Leclerc do wrong though? At the time it looked a bit clumsy from him and I was expecting stewards to do something about it.
But with hindsight I’m not sure Leclerc did anything wrong. He moved slightly back towards racing line while Ver was still partially alongside, but he was still leaving more than a cars width of track for Ver to use.
gDog (@gdog)
2nd June 2025, 12:59
Was supposed be in reply to Ferdi above
David BR (@david-br)
2nd June 2025, 13:35
@gdog Leclerc claimed that Verstappen was trying to force him onto the dirty side of the track into the first corner (adding that it was what he, Leclerc, would have done) but actually Verstappen simply held position. Leclerc was the one trying to take the racing line, more to the left, and thus squeezing Verstappen, only the latter didn’t respond.
I think it was a dangerous moment but they both got away with it. I’m not sure why Verstappen should cede position – apart from the obvious desire to avoid contact – since Leclerc had room to his right, he was making the pass and it’s his problem if the line into the corner isn’t ideal since he hadn’t actually passed Verstappen (and wasn’t even level I don’t think). Hence Max felted he’d been ‘rammed.’
RomTrain (@romtrain)
2nd June 2025, 14:12
The car in front (even with a car alongside) can choose his line, and the one behind needs to react to that. Ofc with a car alongside needs to leave a cars width.
Its the same thing, VER did just seconds before, when he drove over to the right.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
3rd June 2025, 20:00
@david-br Verstappen was trying to put Leclerc on the dirty side. It was just that he’d just had an absolute tanker-slapper and was therefore having trouble executing the plan (because at a key moment, simply not sticking it in the wall constituted an achievement). Plans are still plans, even when they lose all their momentum.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
3rd June 2025, 20:03
(To be clear, I think Max can be mildly proud of his performance in the Leclerc situation. A lesser driver would not only not have been in a position to get involved in that situation because they would have lost too much time and/or crashed into a wall, but the Verstappen of a few years ago would have scattered carbon fibre across the track by accident – or hit the wall when he lost his temper about it afterwards).
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
2nd June 2025, 13:57
It wasn’t exactly Senna v Mansell (in the very first Grand Prix at this track)… both appeared to be moving towards each other. “A bit clumsy” sounds about right, and any contact just there would have come as a surprise to a driver already wound up from his save coming off the last corner.
Dave
2nd June 2025, 13:58
Max did go on to the hard tire during the last safety period, so I do wonder if the grip was the problem, or the lack of grip causing movements of the car. Why his team decided to put him either in the pit or the hard tire is another story and one Red Bull probably won’t tell anyone. In whole race, his car was the only car to use the hard tire, none of the other eighteen drivers used it. Lance Strol didn’t make the start, so there were only nineteen driver’s.
Laz
2nd June 2025, 14:03
“ Formula One Management may misinterpret messages at times, but creating one would obviously be a different matter entirely.”
They do it nearly every weekend. – “I’m ok.” Everytime anyone has a crash they put that on screen. Yet none of the drivers actually say it over radio.
cdavman (@cdavman)
2nd June 2025, 14:10
Ah just wrote this exact same thing, but you beat me to it!
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
2nd June 2025, 21:14
Can you recall a recent example of that happening?
Laz
3rd June 2025, 0:39
They’ve been doing it for about 2 years now. You watch next time a driver has a big crash it’ll come up with them saying ‘I’m ok’ every time without fail. But then go listen to their onboards. There are times when they do say ‘I’m ok’, but usually it’s just them explaining what happened to their engineer. It’s pretty rare that they actually say ‘I’m ok.’ I’m not about to go trying to dig up clips on youtube to prove it, I just encourage you to keep an eye out for it whenever a driver ends up in the wall from now on.
I’m sure FOM are just doing it to immediately ease fears the drivers maybe hurt. But the actual radio message would do that just fine, where the automated message just make me think FOM pressed the ‘I’m ok’ button again. There is also an element that I really don’t like that they’re treating us like children with the automated ‘I’m ok’ message.
Moshambles (@moshambles)
3rd June 2025, 8:30
So you won’t give an example
LosD (@losd)
3rd June 2025, 8:30
It is _in_ the article. On heavy crashes, they stop broadcasting the radio from the onboards
cdavman (@cdavman)
2nd June 2025, 14:08
FOM absolutely do make up some of those messages though.
The classic one is after a crash. The radio message text pops up “I’m OK” once they know the driver is ok. Despite that almost certainly not being what they initially say after the crash.
So I wouldn’t put it past them to invent other messages for entertainment purposes. They already play out the audio in a strange order to change the narrative, again, for entertainment purposes.
Simon
2nd June 2025, 20:32
There will always be a delay on radio messages to allow for transcribing and for censoring swear words.
However, I remember previous discussions on forums about radio message use on Drive To Survive – where a message from a driver during Race A has been used when showing Race B. I would hope that F1TV don’t do this on race weekends, but wouldn’t be surprised if they do
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
3rd June 2025, 9:05
Maybe theres an ‘im ok’ double press or something. When we have people maybe breaking the rules and ramming opponents im not that bothered
Neil (@neilosjames)
2nd June 2025, 19:16
Is it plausible they put Verstappen’s name on the screen with a quote from Russell by mistake?
It’d fit with the positions on track at the time, and go with what had happened. Verstappen saying it would make no sense at all, even if he did think Leclerc was solely to blame for the contact on the straight.
osnola
2nd June 2025, 19:49
Very well possible.. probably the same one who put doohan on screen.
DTS brings all kind of non knowledge people to f1
( just read these topics)
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
3rd June 2025, 10:47
As with Verstappen, no such message was played from Russell at the same time. Though of course that doesn’t necessarily disprove your theory!
SteveP
2nd June 2025, 20:20
UK C4 highlights programme: Audio with the give the position back and the text on screen with the text attributed to Max.
Correct attribution? I will leave that to others.
Femke
2nd June 2025, 21:31
Same with the “box box” radio messages being shown on thebworld feed. Most drivers receive their pitstop message rather differently, with instructions and reminders for pit limiters
Simon
3rd June 2025, 7:38
Isn’t that the same thing Max did to Norris in Austria? yet all the Max fans said there was enough room for Norris to move to the left so it was Norris fault lol
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
3rd June 2025, 19:43
I’ve seen one too many “I’m OK” messages prefacing a view (or audio) of a driver who is clearly not OK (if only by way of being upset) to believe silent screen messages. It’s possible it’s triggered by the driver pressing the pit button (in which case it can charitably mean the driver has some sort of consciousness, which is important to know), but I can’t even be confident of that.
I think that Max’s message was put on the feed to make Max look more petulant than he actually was. Ironically, this happened before FOM could possibly have known a better example of petulance was coming.
By this point, any text not accompanied by audio should be treated as having never happened, unless later backed up with evidence.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
5th June 2025, 8:39
I’ve assumed it is used to indicate that they are still able to talk and make sense, but it doesn’t factor in if they are hurt or breathing heavily. It would be better if they just delayed things slightly and summarize what is said and then create a brief message summarizing the situation.
I can understand why they don’t broadcast what is said live, but that “I’m OK” is really tedious. It would be much better if it was just confirmed that “he’s speaking to his team” so at least we know that there is communication rather than showing that the driver is stating a totally fake message….