Cricket
Motorsport
Basketball test
League - Test
Combat Sports
Netball
Football
F1 champs told to leave sport for disrespectful slurs
SEN • March 19th, 2026 4:11 pm
Max Verstappen and Lando Norris should be shown the F1 door for the disrespect they have shown the sport in recent weeks, according to one former driver.
The start to the 2026 season has been cruel to the four-time title winner and his McLaren counterpart.
Verstappen had another weekend to forget in China last week where he was forced to retire while Norris failed to even start the race.
Both have been hugely critical of the new regulations introduced this season with the Red Bull star comparing driving the current crop of F1 cars to playing Mario Kart.
“It’s a joke. I’d say the same thing if I won. If anyone actually finds this fun, then they don’t understand what racing is all about,” Verstappen said.
“It’s playing Mario Kart. This is not racing.”
Norris meanwhile described the current cars as “probably the worst” the sport has ever seen.
“We’ve come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1, and the nicest to drive, to probably the worst,” he said.
“It sucks, but you have to live with it and just maximise what you get given.”
Given their status in the sport and their reach across media and social platforms, both Verstappen and Norris have been slammed by Juan Pablo Montoya with the Colombian legend calling for heavy sanctions.
"At some point, Formula 1 needs to do what the sports world in the United States does: for people who don’t respect the sport, there’s the door," Montoya said to AS Colombia.
"They can leave or get a fine, so they truly learn to respect what they’re doing. That’s what I would do.
"It’s fine for people to have an opinion. I’m not saying they have to like it, but mocking Formula 1 and comparing it to Mario Kart, that shouldn’t be accepted by Formula 1."
