Whether Max Verstappen deserved to be disqualified from the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix after his clash with George Russell is more or less irrelevant – yet the stewards' ruling on that incident not only included a 10-second penalty, which dropped him from fifth to 10th in the final standings, but also added three more points to his licence. That leaves him just one point away from an automatic race ban, and he'll need to be extra careful over the next two weekends – in Montreal and Spielberg – until at least some of the points expire.
The penalty points system, introduced following the first-lap pile-up at Spa in 2012, is often criticised – the main argument being that drivers can be punished for relatively minor infractions. Yet in Verstappen’s case, that doesn’t really apply: most of his points over the past 12 months have come from collisions with other drivers or forcing rivals off the track.
