Max Verstappen ordered Guardian journalist Giles Richards to leave a scheduled media session at the Japanese Grand Prix on Thursday, refusing to speak until the reporter departed Red Bull’s hospitality area at Suzuka Circuit. The four-time Formula 1 world champion told Richards to “get out” before declaring to the remaining press corps, “Now we can start,” according to the Associated Press.
The confrontation, which took place at the third race of the 2026 season, stunned journalists in the paddock. Before the session could begin, Verstappen addressed the room directly: “I’m not speaking before he’s leaving,” he said, pointing at Richards. The veteran reporter complied and left without incident.
Verstappen’s objection traced back months — to a question Richards posed at the post-race press conference following the 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in December. At that event, Richards asked Verstappen whether losing the drivers’ championship to Lando Norris by just two points might cause him to regret his collision with George Russell at the Spanish Grand Prix earlier that season. The question clearly struck a nerve. As ESPN reported, Verstappen responded at the time by saying, “You forget all the other stuff that happened in my season. The only thing you mention is Barcelona.”
The Barcelona incident had been a pivotal moment in Verstappen’s 2025 title fight. He received a 10-second time penalty at the Spanish Grand Prix for causing a collision with Russell’s car, a punishment that dropped him from fifth place to 10th in the official classification. That result cost him nine championship points — far more than the two-point margin by which he ultimately lost the title to Norris after the final round.
Richards broke his silence on the ejection in a column published Thursday by The Guardian. He wrote that he was “deeply disappointed” by Verstappen’s decision and noted that his media colleagues in the F1 paddock were “universally shocked” by what had transpired, according to GPFans.com. One of Richards’ paddock colleagues reportedly described Verstappen’s behaviour as “classless.”
The journalist emphasized how unusual the incident was. Richards stated he had never previously been asked to leave a press conference and that such an occurrence is extremely rare in Formula 1. In more than a decade of covering the sport, he wrote, he had interviewed Verstappen approximately a dozen times, and all of those encounters had been friendly and good-humoured. The Suzuka session marked their first face-to-face encounter of the 2026 season.
However, Verstappen’s combative relationship with the media is not new. In 2022, he boycotted Sky Sports F1 over a race weekend in Mexico, citing what he called “disrespectful” coverage, as Motorsport.com noted. Even earlier, in 2018, he reportedly threatened to “headbutt someone” after being repeatedly questioned about his reputation for crashing.
The Dutch driver has also expressed broader frustrations with the British-dominated F1 press corps. After winning his fourth world title in 2024, Verstappen remarked that 80 to 85 percent of F1 media is British and suggested that some coverage of him had not been fair, Crash.net reported. and suggested that some coverage of him had not been fair, Crash.net reported.
The timing of the outburst adds another layer of intrigue. At the start of the 2026 season, Verstappen and Red Bull have reportedly been unable to match the pace of leading team Mercedes, according to The Japan Times. Competitive struggles on the track may have heightened tensions off it, though Verstappen has not publicly addressed whether frustration with results played any role in the incident.
The episode has reignited debate about the boundaries between press freedom and driver authority in Formula 1’s media environment. Scheduled media sessions are a standard part of each Grand Prix weekend, and journalists are typically granted access as part of their accreditation. Verstappen’s ability to single out and remove an individual reporter raises questions about the sport’s protocols for protecting press access.
Neither Red Bull Racing nor the FIA have publicly commented on the incident. Richards, for his part, made clear in his column that he stood by the question he asked in Abu Dhabi — a straightforward inquiry about a penalty that, by the numbers, proved decisive in the championship outcome. As The Irish Times noted, the journalist’s account has drawn widespread attention across the motorsport world and beyond.
