F1 champion Max Verstappen facing FIA investigation over bizarre incident at Hungarian GP

Max Verstappen,FIA,Red Bull,Belgium,2025 — Photo: © IMAGO

Hungarian Grand Prix

Max Verstappen facing FIA investigation over bizarre incident at Hungarian GP

Verstappen has put Red Bull at risk of an FIA punishment in Hungary

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Friday 1 August 2025 17:57 Updated: 18:47

F1 champion Max Verstappen has potentially put himself and Red Bull at risk of an FIA punishment after making a bizarre on-track decision at this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.

During the second practice session of the weekend at the Hungaroring, the Dutchman could be seen slowing his RB21 as he headed into Turn 3, before proceeding to throw a towel out of his cockpit and onto the track.

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Discussing the strange moment on Sky Sports F1, David Croft criticised Verstappen's decision to discard the Red Bull-branded towel onto the circuit during an active session, highlighting that a punishment could come his way as a result of the dangerous move.

"There's two things there, he's thrown that onto the circuit, he has no idea whether he's throwing that onto the grass, into the trees, or if that's going to go behind, into a car or onto someone's helmet or into an engine cooling or whatever.

"Secondly, cars shouldn't be being released with towels left in them, so is it unsafe release conditions?"

Fellow pundit Anthony Davidson then added to Croft's point, saying: "I think it's an unsafe release from the team, it's a mistake from the team so maybe a fine coming their way."

Max Verstappen experienced a strange issue in Hungary with a towel in his cockpit

Red Bull at risk of Hungarian GP punishment over towel fiasco

Verstappen did appear considerate of his fellow racing rivals by pulling to the side of the Hungaroring to discard the towel.

Nevertheless, his Red Bull team are likely to be put under investigation over why the item was left in the RB21 in the first place.

With just one minute left of Friday's final practice session, the Red Bull towel was still interfering with FP2 and could be seen still stuck on the track.

Assessing Verstappen's risk of a penalty compared to Red Bull's, former Aston Martin strategy engineer Bernie Collins, said: "It's not uncommon, I think we've already had it at one point this year, I think one of the McLaren drivers had a tool left in the car."

"I think those sorts of things happen from time to time, those rags are used a lot when they're cleaning the car, on Max's car they were actually doing a lot of flow-vis so probably cleaning that off."

"He's tried to do what looks like the best job throwing it out of the car but arguably, should it have warranted coming in for a pit stop and going again? Yes it ruins your soft run but it's not anyone else's fault your soft run is ruined, it's your team's fault.

"To risk that getting sucked into someone else's brake duct, someone else's radio coolant, that ruins their run completely because the team might not realise straight away, the temperatures start to rise and you could destroy someone else's engine, that's the risk.

"There could have been a bit more caution there," she concluded.

The four-time champion was summoned to the stewards for investigation over the incident following FP2 for his car allegedly being released in an unsafe condition.

When Lando Norris and his McLaren F1 team were investigated for the same reason earlier this year over the aforementioned tool incident, the FIA found that a genuine mistake had been made.

Therefore, McLaren were only handed a warning after the stewards determined that: "The incident qualifies as a car being released in an unsafe condition, but the driver realised the problem extremely quickly and reacted adequately to prevent any unsafe or dangerous situation."

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Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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Red Bull Max Verstappen FIA Hungarian Grand Prix David Croft Anthony Davidson