Why F1 needs to rediscover the lost art of the fist shake

Before a run-off area had been installed at Monaco’s Mirabeau corner, providing a place into which a cynical driver might spin during qualifying to bring out a yellow flag and deny their team-mate a chance at pole position (mentioning no names here), that section was simply bordered by Armco. It was here in the 1975 edition of the Monaco Grand Prix that James Hunt’s Hesketh came to rest after Patrick Depailler stuffed his Tyrrell up the inside line in a literal let-me-through-or-we-crash manoeuvre.

Fortunately the TV cameras stayed rolling for what happened next.

Hunt unbelted and got out but refused to leave the scene, going full Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes on the marshals trying to usher him to safety. Cars continued to roar past. Arms continued to wave. The increasingly animated Hunt would not be denied the opportunity to express his animus.

A full lap passed and, as Depailler went by, Hunt greeted him with a furious shake of the fist before stalking across the road – these days an offence meriting a fine and much paperwork in itself. And then the moment was over, Hunt’s rage spent.

“A very nice guy,” Hunt would later remark of Depailler, “but completely mad.”

Similar examples are legion, not only through much of the Formula 1 world championship’s 75 years but all the way back to the era of chain-driven leviathans which one braked by tugging a lever outside the cockpit. So why is it so challenging, now, for F1 drivers and those who sign off their salaries to demonstrate the occasional flash of ire and then – with catharsis achieved and the audience suitably amused – move on?

Hunt was most displeased by Depailler's driving at Monaco in 1975 and demonstrated it with a vigorous display of fist-shaking

Photo by: LAT Photographic

Perhaps it’s because in this era of everything, everywhere, all at once, any action or utterance persists because it is endlessly replayable. That aberrant view you expressed on Twitter a few years ago? That time you effed and blinded over the team radio because your team-mate didn’t scuttle out of the way fast enough? They have become eternally defining turds that won’t flush down.

Add to this the swelling of F1’s audience and concomitant sponsor interest, and we now exist in a stultifying atmosphere of corporate blandness where the exception that proves the rule is the ongoing trade of ‘zingers’ between Toto Wolff and Christian Horner. And even that feels both contrived and anodyne, like watching two pantomime dames swing their handbags.

Take each team’s social media output – a nauseatingly sweet and indistinguishable hinterland of (dread phrase) “wholesome feels”. One would think F1 was a travelling bake sale rather than a high-octane sport in which hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake.

A little needle is fine. It isn’t necessarily eternal. And nobody should have to apologise for showing a little human weakness in the moment

But humanity will out. Occasionally the mask slips. And such is the public appetite for these occasions that they acquire a disproportionate prominence. Dingbats will, of course, blame “the media”, but if there were no demand there would be no supply.

During one of Ferrari’s pre-race press conferences at last year’s Qatar Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz was repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Charles Leclerc and whether they would still “be friends” when they were no longer team-mates. This against a background of occasional mask-slips such as Leclerc’s Las Vegas radio rant about being too “nice”.

You could almost see wisps of smoke licking out of Sainz’s ears as he tried to formulate a response that wouldn’t come rocketing back out of the U-bend every five minutes for the rest of his career.

Here’s the thing – this is a competitive sport. The drivers don’t all have to be best friends. And even if they rub along quite convivially there will be points of stress.

Ferrari has replaced Carlos Sainz with Lewis Hamilton for the 2025 season while offering Charles Leclerc a new, long-term deal

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

The provisional wing of fandom will of course go into pitchfork mob mode at the thought of their heroes being portrayed as anything other than secular saints. This idolatry is a contributor to the wider issue, if not actually unusual; hero worship is a trope of fiction and art, after all.

Back in the early days of the Renaissance many notable artists rediscovered and portrayed the ancient Greek parable of Hercules at the crossroads, wherein the titular hero was visited by personifications of vice and virtue. Had they read their Greek literature more thoroughly they would have known that Hercules was in many ways a bit of a wrong ’un, but I digress.

Rest assured that in the real world the F1 paddock consists of ultra-competitive individuals who will do anything in their power to get an edge over one another. Even if that means putting a wheel or two over the metaphorical white lines marking the limits of what is acceptable.

If we can grasp this then we can understand, too, that such instances aren’t necessarily eternally defining. Lewis Hamilton, for instance, has a reputation for clean racing that isn’t duly besmirched by his detractors regularly ‘surfacing’ his moment of madness in qualifying for the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix as if it were a trump card. Equally Fernando Alonso’s riposte on that day doesn’t place him alongside Attila the Hun in the pantheon of villainry.

Achille Varzi and Tazio Nuvolari respected each other while not wanting to be on the same team. Grand prix racing survived. Likewise modern F1 can get by if George Russell doesn’t want to sit next to Max Verstappen at dinner right now. Kevin Magnussen told Nico Hulkenberg to “suck my balls”, nobody died, and they got along just fine as team-mates just a few years later.

A little needle is fine. It isn’t necessarily eternal. And nobody should have to apologise for showing a little human weakness in the moment. Few spectacles were more disappointing and unedifying last season than Liam Lawson feeling compelled to apologise for giving Sergio Perez the finger in Mexico and Lando Norris serially backtracking on his criticisms of Verstappen’s driving etiquette, as if he were trapped in an Instagram boomerang.

So – shake that fist. Then forget about it. Just don’t, whatever you do, cross the track afterwards…

Will there be more needle between drivers in 2025 with competition expected to be closer?

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images