Max Verstappen has been told he needs to walk away from Formula One, after revealing that he is unhappy with a change in the sport.
Despite the fact that we're only three races into the season, it looks pretty unlikely that anyone will stop Verstappen from winning a third straight drivers' championship.
The Red Bull Racing driver has won two of the first three races, finishing second in the other, in which he started down in 16th, and obviously leads the standings already.
He's still managed to have time to have a kind of falling out with teammate Sergio Perez and take a swipe at old rival Lewis Hamilton.
Advert
The 'falling out' with Perez was to do with Verstappen's dad, Jos, not giving the Mexican his props after winning in Saudi Arabia, but the younger member of the family has now said that was totally normal.
What wasn't so normal was the fact that the Dutchman has claimed that he is considering his future in the sport, due to the suggested changes in format.
There is consideration to cutting the number of practice sessions and raising the amount of sprint races in a season, leading to the champ's issues.
Now former F1 world champion, Damon Hill, has told the Red Bull star that he should give up the sport if it's going to stop being fun for him.
"Max's retirement threat is very unusual," Hill said on Sky Sports F1 podcast.
"It is kind of strange to hear, isn't it? I mean, what's he gonna do with himself? He should stop now, really. Stop now, he's done it.
"You mentioned fun. I think that's a very important point. Is he having fun, because I sometimes think he's not having fun. I think you have to love what you're doing, otherwise it's a grind.
"I think there's an element of this with Max with him wanting not to waste his time on superfluous things that really are just invented for novelty reasons.
"I think he's that kind of person. So I can imagine him just saying it because he just thinks 'well, I just come here and want to win Grand Prix. I just want one race to mean something. I don't want to have a half-value race, what's the point of that on your CV?'
"People aren't gonna go 'how many Grand Prix have you won? Now how many Sprints have you won?'"
Fans of Verstappen's biggest rival, Hamilton, continue to press for the 2021 title to be given to the Mercedes driver, who himself is under threat of losing one of his titles.
But no doubt Lewis would be quite happy to see the man who beat him to the title two years ago take Hill's advice and walk away.
Topics: Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Formula 1
Ryan Sidle