Max Verstappen has been told to “shut up and deal with it” by former F1 race winner Juan Pablo Montoya after the Dutchman said he is considering retirement at the end of the season.
Four-time F1 world champion Verstappen has been vociferous in his criticism of the new cars and regulations this year and, after finishing eighth in Sunday’s Japanese GP, admitted he is considering walking away from the sport at the end of the current campaign.
Yet Montoya, a seven-time race winner with Williams and McLaren, has followed Martin Brundle’s lead in criticising Verstappen’s repeated criticism, insisting that “nobody is bigger than the sport.”
“If you're unhappy with being an F1, you should leave,” Montoya said. “Have the courage of your convictions. If you're unhappy with the rules, then talk to people instead of threatening that you're going to leave. That’s not going to help that much.
“If I were him, I’d shut up, deal with it and admit that he's in a s***** car and admit he's frustrated because his car is a piece of cr** that is 20 kilos over and it's going to be uncompetitive all year.
“At the end of the day, nobody's bigger than the sport.”
It is believed that Verstappen – who has a £50m deal with Red Bull until the end of the 2028 season – has an exit clause for the end of the current campaign, allowing him to leave if he is positioned outside the top two in the drivers’ championship by the summer break.
Currently, he is ninth, 55 points behind second-placed George Russell.
“It's like when you're in a marriage and the other person doesn't want to be with you, what are you going to do?” Montoya added, speaking in partnership with Casinostugan. “If the other person decides you're not the person they want to spend the rest of your life with, whether you want to try to keep them or not, they're going to be unhappy. And they're going to grab you by the balls and use you, and then still leave.
“The sport is bigger than one person. And it is. However big a person he is, the sport is bigger. The problem with leaving, if you really are just leaving to put pressure on to change regulations, the sport is going to move without you.
“And when you want to come back, there might not be a place for you. You need to know that when you're leaving, it's for good. I did.”
F1 now has a five-week break until the next race in Miami on 3 May.
