From James BroughtonPresent June 5, 2025
We denote Dr. Helmut Marko from Red Bull often as “Mad Dog Marko” or simply “The Mad Dog”. In the city slang, mad dog is a mocking term that is used to describe someone who is literally wild and literally, physically or mentally. But once – maybe only once – we will refer to the crazy dog through its official title: Dr. Helmut Marko. Why? Because in a rare moment of clarity, he actually made a critical and balanced assessment of his brilliant but own superstar driver Max Verstappen.
The latest controversy around Verstappen – although this was certainly not the last – was during the Spanish Grand Prix. After a restart of a security car, Verstappen met with George Russell in round 61. After an earlier struggle between the two, the Verstappen team said to return the position to Russell.
Verstappen initially refused to meet. And when he finally did it, his anger stayed. He slowed down just enough to leave Russell by a few centimeters, and then immediately took up the full racing speed, collided and effectively forced Russell off the route.
He was lucky enough to avoid a black flag, but received a time penalty of 10 seconds and dropped it from 4th to 10th place. He later apologized to the team, but even Red Bull could not defend Verstappen’s actions. Even the telemetry data was clear and damn.
In an interview with an Austrian television station, Dr. Helmut Marko the decision of the Stewards to issue the 10-second penalty.
“The situation with Russell (when the Briton tried to go into turn 1, but went out of the route). And you have to say that Max knows the regulations in detail. He immediately said: ‘Hey, he was out of control and so I had to go far.“”
“The internal discussion was that it was 50-50. And since it happened immediately after the security car period, the effects of a 10-second penalty is much larger than if it happened in the middle of the race. So that was one thing. Max did not want to return the position. But he was instructed to do so in protest.”
“Max raised the gas, so we all assumed that he let Russell through. And then he suddenly accelerated again,” recalled Marko. “I don’t know what kind of misjudgment or thinking process was going on in him. And then, as you say, hell broke out.”
“It was unnecessary and many points lost. But due to all the incidents and false decisions that unfortunately happened, the emotions simply defeated him.”
