Max Verstappen walked into his press conference at Suzuka, spotted a journalist in the room, and refused to begin. The offense? A question asked four months earlier.

“I’m not speaking before he’s leaving,” the four-time world champion said, according to Motorsport.com. The journalist was Giles Richards of The Guardian. When Richards asked if this was about his season-ending query in Abu Dhabi, Verstappen smiled and confirmed: “Get out.”

Richards had asked Verstappen whether he regretted his collision with George Russell at the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix—a petulant move that earned a 10-second penalty and cost him nine championship points. Verstappen ultimately lost the title to Lando Norris by two. The question was straightforward. Verstappen called it out at the time for fixating on “Barcelona” and giving him a “stupid grin,” and has apparently nursed the grudge since.

What followed was almost theatrical in its pettiness: a four-time world champion grinning while a reporter was effectively ejected from a press conference for doing his job. Richards, writing in The Guardian, noted that Verstappen “was smiling throughout the exchange.” Colleagues in the press room called the move “classless.”

This isn’t Verstappen’s first clash with British media. He boycotted Sky Sports F1 in 2022 and has frequently claimed his “wrong passport” makes him a target for unfair coverage. But there’s a difference between complaining about bias and literally removing the person asking questions.

Richards took it gracefully, writing that “there are far more serious problems in the world than an F1 driver being cross with you.” Within hours, he’d received his first abusive email. True enough. But the incident captures something uncomfortable about modern sports media: access is a privilege granted by the powerful, and using it to ask difficult questions can cost you the room.

Sources