Russell v Verstappen - what's going on?

"People have been bullied by Max for years now."

"George is a backstabber. That he brings all this stuff up. He's just a loser."

"Max has been enabled because nobody's stood up to him. He cannot deal with adversity, he slams his whole team and loses the plot."

"George lies and pastes all kinds of things together that aren't true."

In terms of the power of the language employed, the dispute between George Russell and Max Verstappen that has blown up in the past week is already right up there in the list of all-time great feuds between Formula 1 drivers.

On Thursday evening, both attended the traditional annual dinner the drivers share in Abu Dhabi.

Russell was last to turn up. There were two seats left, both next to Verstappen, who waved, said "Hi, George" and indicated for him to sit down.

Russell said hello back then, in what must have been an awkward moment, took one of the seats and moved it away to sit next to team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

It might have been a misjudgement. Had Russell sat down with Verstappen, they would probably have sorted it all out within a couple of minutes.

These two have history.

After a crash during the sprint race in Azerbaijan in 2022, Verstappen called Russell "Princess George" and "a dickhead" in a spat the Briton called "a little bit pathetic".

It's lain dormant in the intervening two years, much of which were characterised by domination by Verstappen and his Red Bull team.

But at the end of a 2024 season in which the field has closed up, and the competition has escalated between all four top teams and their drivers, all it took was one relatively small incident for it all to blow up.

And now, after what they have said, it might be a while before they play together at padel - the F1 drivers' current sporting pastime of choice - which they have been doing this year regularly with Lando Norris, Alex Albon and sometimes Carlos Sainz.

Verstappen started all this, in public at least, after winning last weekend's Qatar Grand Prix. He said he had "lost all respect" for Russell, adding: "I've never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard."

The Dutchman's comments were a reference to his perception of Russell's actions in the stewards' room in Qatar, at a hearing that led to the Red Bull driver being given a one-place grid penalty and being demoted from pole position to second place behind Russell's Mercedes.

Verstappen had been called to the stewards for driving unnecessarily slowly, and Russell, as the driver who had been impeded, went, too.

They had qualified one-two for the grand prix, with Verstappen ahead of Russell.

Verstappen had broken the rule defining the speed drivers are not allowed to dip below on a slow lap in qualifying. But what happened in the stewards' room incensed Verstappen, who felt Russell had gone overboard in stating his case in a bid to earn his rival a penalty.

Russell, who had been fastest on the first runs in final qualifying, felt the incident had cost him pole position.

They exchanged words outside the stewards' room after the hearing, when Russell claims Verstappen threatened to "purposefully go out of his way to crash into me and 'put me on my head in the wall'". And again as the drivers were being interviewed on the grid before the race. Their second argument was witnessed by Sainz, Norris and Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Perez.

Because of the timings of the post-race interviews in Qatar, Thursday - media day at the season finale in Abu Dhabi - was Russell's first chance to address Verstappen's comments.

"It's funny," he said, "because even before I said a word in the stewards, he was swearing at the stewards. He was so angry before I'd even spoken.

"There is nothing to lie about. He was going too slow. He was on the racing line and in the high-speed corner. I wasn't trying to get him a penalty. I was just trying to prepare my lap.

"You fight hard on track and in the stewards, the same way as Max the very next day asked his team to look at Lando's penalty on the yellow flag. That's not personal. That's racing. I don't know why he felt the need for this personal attack and I'm not going to take it."

It's not as if Russell and Verstappen have always despised each other, though their relationship clearly needs some maintenance.

Of course, drivers are friendlier with some of their peers than others.

Verstappen gets on particularly well with Nico Hulkenberg. Norris is good friends with Sainz, whose relationship with Charles Leclerc seems particularly warm for team-mates. Hamilton generally keeps himself to himself.

And this has been an era of remarkable harmony between the drivers. But once they get out on track, where it matters to these animals of incredible competitive intensity, all that is forgotten.

For the other drivers, this is wryly amusing, and all part of the game.

Norris - Verstappen's title rival this year and a friend of both men - said: "For George, by saying what he said… at times you have that respect between drivers when something happens and you don't want either to get a penalty because it's just a situation where no-one should really get a penalty.

"Mercedes are not fighting for a championship so they will do what - at all costs - it takes to try and get a pole or win, and maybe he has paid the price a little bit in the respect from Max.

"But everyone does things their own way. I enjoyed watching them argue the way they did."

Fernando Alonso, whose mutual respect with Verstappen has been obvious for years, dismissed the Dutchman's claim Russell was two-faced.

"No, I don't think so," Alonso said. "George is a great driver, great person. I'm a good friend of George as well. I don't think that he's showing different faces here and there.

"I think it's more about what Max probably agrees with me that I said many times, that some of the penalties are a little bit not consistent.

"You know, if you have that one episode in Qatar and then you go to the next event and you replicate exactly the same episode - which you can replicate by yourself, you can induce that episode driving - then you don't get the same result in terms of penalties. That's the frustration that we sometimes have."

This is not the first driver spat in F1, and it won't be the last. The sport thrives on them.

One of the most appealing things about watching it is it strips its opponents bare. The pressure and intensity of competition means there is no hiding one's true self.

In terms of seriousness of their on-track rivalry, the incidents in which they have been involved, Russell v Verstappen is certainly no Ayrton Senna v Alain Prost, or Hamilton v Nico Rosberg.

They haven't yet had the machinery to compete against each other at the level of competitive intensity that would bring it to that level.

But it certainly has all the ingredients to develop into something like it.