Max Verstappen Ripped F1 For a Shitshow Of a Week Then Overcame a 5 Second Penalty Plus Damage To His Car To Win A Fun Race In Vegas

ANP. Getty Images.

It may have began horrifically and led to a class action lawsuit by the fans, but Vegas' F1 weekend capped off with a pretty good race. As the F1 world has grown accustomed to witnessing, Max Verstappen took home the title, but it wasn't easy. Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez gave it all they had to challenge him, but had to settle for P2 and P3 respectively. 

It cannot be stated enough how big of a shit show the opening festivities were to this event. And by that I mean seemingly whatever could go wrong, went wrong. It was the F1 version of Fyre Festival as I detailed here. 

Verstappen took it upon himself to go on a lengthy rant where he ripped F1 for all that's unfolded in Vegas. Seems the consensus sentiment between drivers was that F1 viewed this as more of a spectacle than sport. He compared Monaco to the Champion's League and Vegas to the National League. In his rant he dropped a gem regarding the slap in the face $200 voucher fans were offered as an apology for Thursday's debacle: "If I were a fan, I would tear the whole place down.”

As for the race, you had three guys in contention to win it down the stretch. Verstappen was handed a five second penalty, damage to his car, and a field of racers to overcome. It made for some great TV and saved the event. 

I'm no F1 expert and am only slowly getting into this, but one of the best moves of the night came when Leclerc passed Perez at pretty much the last possible second. 

Ferrari was fired up

But the glory went to Verstappen.  As I mentioned before, he dealt with some damage to his car which came here with George Russell. 

Russell owned up to the error afterwards

Verstappen's five second penalty came from an earlier move where he forced Leclerc off the track. 

He didn't seem to care and felt comfortable about his chances regardless of the setback. Dude's won a billion of these races, this just gave him a challenge to make it interesting. 

Max seemed to apologize afterwards as well. Just a bunch of lads owning up to mistakes and being pals. 

In the end, Verstappen's move on Leclerc here got him the W

I've seen a bunch of arguing over the punishment Max was given. Some wanted place swapping instead of a 5 second penalty. I'm not smart enough to say which would have been more appropriate, I'll leave that to you track heads to figure that one out. Seemed like it did trouble him a bit and force Verstappen to go to work to get the win. But again, what do I know? 

Overall I thought the race salvaged a disaster of a weekend. Still really bad and I'm sure locals are dreading the fact that this is just year 1 out of 10 for this event. Now they'll tear all this down just to rebuild it next summer. Hopefully they learn about all their failures here and figure out the right way to do it. Maybe start with not pissing off literally every single person involved with the event. 

Gonna close out the blog with this tidbit. Verstappen and Red Bull are fucking ridiculous. I thought Djokovic's dominance in tennis was silly, but this makes him look like a scrub. 

P.S. There's a chance everything in this blog is wrong, but it's the thought that counts?