Why Max Verstappen’s reaction to infamous Alain Prost vs Ayrton Senna crash could be bad news for Lewis Hamilton in Formula1 title decider

Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen had managed to keep things cordial - unntil now.

The pair have been on the edge non-stop since the curtain was lifted at the season’s very first race back in March, but Verstappen finally took things too far at turn 26 of the Jeddah Corniche circuit.

In applying 69 bar to his brakes with Hamilton right behind, Verstappen ratcheted up tension to fever pitch with a collision in the season’s penultimate race, turning things nasty with one round to go.

Astonishingly level on points heading into the final race in Abu Dhabi, the winner will take all, but Verstappen has an ace up his sleeve, that he’s shown he’s happy to use.

The points may be level, but Verstappen leads the championship due to his superior total of race wins this season, and he has the option of pulling out a card infamously used throughout the sport’s history.

Formula 1 has been starved of drama for almost a decade thanks to Red Bull’s four years of dominance followed by Mercedes breezing to victory after victory in the turbo-hybrid era.

But you don’t have to look much further back for an indication of what might be about to come on December 12.

Motorsport is littered with incidents of title-leaders taking matters into their own hands, and Formula 1’s most shocking occurrence came in arguably the only title bout that can rival this year’s.

In the 1989 season, two of the sport’s greatest ever drivers, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, were teammates at McLaren and in the midst of F1’s most vitriolic rivalry.