Max Verstappen proved right as Izzy Hammond crash exposes Formula E delusion

Max Verstappen likened the new F1 2026 cars to Formula E on steroids during the first official pre-season test in Bahrain last week.

A glowing endorsement of the sport’s new regulations it was not. But in light of Izzy Hammond’s crash in Saudi Arabia last weekend, at least F1 will never sink to the lows of the all-electric series…

Max Verstappen: F1 2026 cars like ‘Formula E on steroids’

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Only a few years ago, before the Netflix effect truly took hold, Formula 1 very often seemed to exist in its own little bubble in a distant corner of the sporting universe.

Never was this better captured than on the day of the British Grand Prix in 2019.

This, you might recall, was described by the media in Britain as ‘Super Sunday’ when three major sporting events were held in the United Kingdom on the same day.

Not a million miles from Silverstone, one of the all-time classic Wimbledon tennis finals played out between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.

A little further up the road, meanwhile, there was England and New Zealand competing at Lord’s in the final of the Cricket World Cup.

On the face of it, July 14 2019 was a fine day for Formula 1.

The crowd witnessed Lewis Hamilton become the most successful driver in the event’s history by collecting a sixth British Grand Prix victory, coming after a highly entertaining battle with his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas in the opening laps.

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They saw Charles Leclerc, dismissed as a soft touch after being barged out of the lead by Max Verstappen in Austria two weeks earlier, bounce back to race Max as hard as anyone had before.

And they looked away out of politeness when it came to Sebastian Vettel, whose decline and fall hit a new low with a clumsy collision in battle with Verstappen that hit home that the crowd was looking at yesterday’s man.

So much excitement, so many talking points.

Yet who outside of Silverstone, outside of the Formula 1 bubble, really cared?

In the words of one esteemed sportswriter at the time, F1 was a very poor third to the tennis and cricket that afternoon.

Not that it occurred to anyone involved in Formula 1, which had become high on its own supply in those early days of the Liberty era.

It left the impression that Formula 1 was totally oblivious to its own irrelevance.

Things are better these days, of course, now that Drive to Survive is established as the leading sports documentary of its type and the Brad Pitt movie, however banal the so-called legacy fans might have found it, has built on that foundation in the eyes of the wider world.

The core product still needs some work, but Formula 1 no longer has to fight quite so hard to try to get itself noticed.

And that little pocket in the quietest corner of the sporting landscape?

Today it is occupied by Formula E, which, it has recently come to our attention, is still going after all these years.

No sport on this planet does fakery better than Formula E, the form of motorsport for people who do not like motorsport.

There has always been something quite sinister about Formula E, going back to the earliest days when celebrities would turn up for no other reason than to signal their squeaky-clean green credentials.

Likewise, the drivers do not behave like traditional racing drivers but more like glorified salesmen who seem obliged to take any and every opportunity to champion Formula E and its cause.

The intentions appear to be good – but who can say for sure? – yet too often Formula E people give the impression of the creepy neighbour who constantly invites you round to their house for a cup of tea.

It’s not as bad as you think, you know! But just make sure you steer clear of the locked room…

It seemed to say it all about the extent of the great Formula E delusion last week when Jeff Dodds, its eternally publicity-hungry chief executive, responded to Verstappen comparing his new Red Bull to a Formula E car on steroids by offering him a test drive behind the wheel of a real one.

As if Max, even at his most frustrated with the direction in which his own sport is heading, could imagine anything worse.

A few days after Dodds’ offer to Verstappen came yet another reminder why Formula E is best avoided with the staging of a special event involving a bunch of Instagram influenzas.

This saw a number of entitled fame-hungry egotists drive Formula E cars around a real-life circuit in Jeddah.

It didn’t end too well when somebody called Izzy Hammond, who at first glance appears to be even less relevant than her father Richard, drove pretty much head on into the wall.

Overlook the delicious irony that Hammond’s accident came at the very corner where Verstappen crashed on his instant-classic qualifying lap at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and this episode represented a new low in motorsport’s recent popularity boom, the kind of explosion that inevitably attracts the worst kind of people.

Such is the inherently dangerous nature of motor racing that it does not lend itself to Soccer Aid-type exhibition events in which everyone’s least-favourite Z-listers can turn up and have a go.

This – much like boxing, another sport to have attracted these smartphone-wielding leeches in recent times – is a serious sport with serious risks that are not to be trivialised or messed with by air-headed, pig-ignorant amateurs.

Not to mention that it doesn’t do Formula E any favours whenever it keeps trying to demonstrate that any old self-obsessed bore from the internet can jump into the cockpit and keep one of its cars pointing in a straight line.

It came as a great relief – no, seriously – when it emerged that Hammond had escaped without injury.

Yet perhaps it would not do any harm to her, her influenza friends and, most pertinently, the people at Formula E who approved this episode if it had the effect of knocking some sense into all involved.

And Formula 1?

Last week’s test in Bahrain did little to ease fears that F1 has taken a very wrong turn with its new rules for 2026.

Study the onboard footage, listen to the electric whirr under braking, and it sounds like each of the F1 new cars has inside a little Formula E one just trying to break out.

Has F1 just neutered itself in its attempt to adhere to the eco-centric demands of the modern world? Quite possibly.

Yet however bad things might get in 2026, rest assured that F1 will never quite sink to the depths of Formula E.

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