{"id":798470,"date":"2026-07-13T05:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/798470\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T05:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:38:10","slug":"fernando-alonsos-max-verstappen-f1-claim-dubbed-rubbish-by-ex-f1-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/798470\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernando Alonso’s Max Verstappen F1 claim dubbed ‘rubbish’ by ex-F1 star"},"content":{"rendered":"

Damon Hill has hit back at Fernando Alonso after the Aston Martin<\/a> driver suggested Formula 1<\/a> was being unfair to Max Verstappen given his difficult 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

Verstappen has endured a torrid season by his own high standards, sitting seventh in the Drivers\u2019 standings, some 103 points off championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and is still searching for his first win of the year. <\/p>\n

His weekend at Silverstone ended in the gravel at Stowe, with a spin in the closing laps leaving him classified 20th \u2014 effectively his third retirement of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Alonso, speaking to Spanish outlet Mundo Deportivo, suggested that Verstappen\u2019s lack of competitiveness this year says more about the machinery than the man. The Aston Martin driver suggested Verstappen remains the standout talent on the grid, questioning whether the sport\u2019s current landscape \u2013 notably the new technical regulations \u2013 was doing him justice.<\/p>\n

But 1996 World Champion Hill was not persuaded, and posted on his Instagram story: \u201cWhat a load of rubbish!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill, like many pundits, is not unbecoming in his opinions, having previously compared Verstappen to Wacky Races character Dick Dastardly during his 2024 title battle with Lando Norris. <\/p>\n

Hill has previously drawn a firmer line between combativeness and recklessness in his critiques of the Red Bull driver, agreeing with comparisons made by Alain Prost between Verstappen and Niki Lauda\u2019s directness, while stressing that Lauda\u2019s racing intelligence set him apart from any tendency toward physical confrontation on track. <\/p>\n

\"\"Max Verstappen has had a miserable 2026 so far<\/p>\n

The 65-year-old has also pointed to his own background in motorcycle racing \u2014 where contact between competitors carries far graver consequences \u2014 as a source of his unease with wheel-to-wheel aggression in F1, an issue that struck close to home following his own title-deciding collision with Michael Schumacher at Adelaide in 1994.<\/p>\n

With Verstappen\u2019s future increasingly a talking point amid the struggles of the Red Bull package, the debate over how the sport should be judging one of its greatest ever drivers looks unlikely to go away any time soon.<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 How an F1 stalwart could be the financial saviour of grassroots racing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Damon Hill has hit back at Fernando Alonso after the Aston Martin driver suggested Formula 1 was being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,3018,576,577,3823,1885,82],"class_list":["post-798470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-hill","tag-max-verstappen","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}