Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Martin Brundle and Juan Pablo Montoya gave sharply different readings of Max Verstappen’s first-lap spin in Miami, turning a dramatic 360-degree recovery into a debate over whether the Red Bull driver had shown elite car control or simply escaped by luck.
The flashpoint came in the opening corners at Hard Rock Stadium. Verstappen started from P2 alongside polesitter Kimi Antonelli, then ran side by side with Charles Leclerc out of Turn 1 before being pinched at the Turn 2 apex. He got on the throttle too early, spun, and somehow completed a full rotation without hitting the wall or another car before carrying on to finish fifth.
In his post-race Sky Sports F1 column, Martin Brundle, former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst, called it an unusual error but also a reminder of why Verstappen is a four-time champion. Brundle wrote that Verstappen was “too eager on the throttle and looped around, an unusual mistake for him,” but that “before that we saw some of his genius in the recovery.” He said Verstappen “deftly used the throttle, brakes, and steering wheel to execute a full 360-degree turn” and “dramatically minimised the chances of being run into.”
Montoya saw the same incident very differently. Speaking on the BBC Chequered Flag podcast and later in comments on his own podcast, the former Williams and McLaren driver rejected the idea that the save should be celebrated as brilliance. “For me, everybody was saying Max was unbelievable, how he controlled his spin. I think that was pure luck,” Montoya said. He added that while Verstappen had recovered it, the bigger point was the mistake itself: “Max spun on the first lap and yes, he saved the situation. If you want to call that talent, fine, let’s call it talent. But he still made a mistake.”
Montoya pushed that criticism beyond the opening lap by pointing to Verstappen’s five-second penalty for crossing the white line while exiting the pit lane under the safety car. He argued that kind of error should not happen in controlled conditions, saying it was not even under green-flag pressure but “under the safety car” and that Verstappen “committed too early.”
That is what made the split in opinion more than a disagreement over one spectacular moment. Brundle’s view cast the spin recovery as the defining act, a display of rare control in the middle of the pack. Montoya treated it as part of a messier race in which Verstappen’s ability to save situations did not erase the mistakes that created them.
Verstappen still salvaged fifth for Red Bull, but Miami left two very different verdicts on the same drive: one praising the save as genius, the other arguing the real story was the avoidable damage behind it.