Sky F1 pundit Damon Hill believes Max Verstappen lacks an ethos of fair racing in his repertoire in a scathing assessment of the Red Bull driver’s defence in Mexico.

Verstappen picked up two 10-second time penalties while racing Lando Norris in Mexico, with the stewards coming down hard on the Red Bull driver for pushing Norris off track at Turn 4 and, seconds later, going off the track and gaining a lasting advantage over his championship rival.

Damon Hill: Max Verstappen refuses to concede turf

Verstappen is attempting to massage his championship lead across the line to win the title with a Red Bull RB20 now incapable of victories, which has brought about an extra layer of aggression from the reigning World Champion – particularly in fights with title rival Norris.

It was the second contentious moment between Verstappen and Norris in the space of a week following their battle in the United States, and 1996 F1 World Champion Damon Hill shared his thoughts on the Mexico race as he appeared on the Sky F1 podcast.

“It was a five-second penalty in Austin for Lando. I think that the stewards clearly looked at it and thought there’s been so much pressure and so much discussion about all of this that maybe they felt they had to apply something a little bit more punitive,” Hill said.

“In each case, they applied 10 seconds. So they took the view that this driver had done something wrong twice and then applied a penalty and he got 10 seconds for each one.

“The problem that Max has is he simply refuses to concede any turf at all, to anyone, in an overtake. So that’s the situation.”

Analysing the Turn 4 incident, the first moment for which Verstappen picked up a 10-second penalty, Hill said: “On the exit of Turn 4, he clearly makes a beeline for the edge of the track to prevent Lando from having any chance at all.

“The aerial footage is very clear to me, he made no attempt to back off and make the corner and leave room for Lando. It was just simply a case of: ‘You’re not coming through.’

“And that’s okay, but is it what we want to see as a sport?

“I think there was some really good wheel-to-wheel action with Liam Lawson and Checo [Perez] – it got a little bit more pushy and shovy but I don’t think it was a malicious attempt to prevent the other person from passing. They were trying to keep things together and they did race wheel to wheel.

“The same with Lewis and George Russell, so it is possible to race fairly and that is something I’m not sure that Max is capable of – it’s not in his repertoire. It’s not in his philosophy. His philosophy is that ‘You’re not coming past.’”

Asked whether Verstappen’s driving choices are purely down to his position in the championship and the dynamic of the increasingly tense fight, Hill said: “That’s the challenge, isn’t it? They say that sport doesn’t build character, it shows character, and his default is to revert to preventative methods, rather than trying to keep it within the bounds of fairness.

“Now, how do you define fairness? That’s a difficult one to define, but I definitely think you shouldn’t be allowed to use your car as a weapon and to just simply block the track because you won’t see any overtaking if you were allowed to allow people to just weave all over the place and do whatever they wanted.

“You’ll never see a single overtake, because everyone would just sit there and go: ‘Well, there’s no point, because he’s going to have me off. What’s the point of even trying?’”

Damon Hill brands Turn 7 move ‘Dick Dastardly’ stuff

Moments after the Turn 4 incident, Verstappen dived up the inside of Norris into the medium-speed Turn 7 corner, with both drivers running wide as the Red Bull failed to stick to the track.

This allowed Charles Leclerc to sneak through on both, with Verstappen maintaining position ahead of Norris – earning himself another 10-second penalty for going off-track and gaining an advantage.

“I think that he was right to get a penalty,” Hill said.

“Whether 10 seconds was the right penalty, I don’t know, but I definitely think the second move he did was just daft. It was Dick Dastardly stuff.

“He just simply accelerated to the apex and it prevented Lando, which looked like Lando was giving him the opportunity taking the place back – Lando really didn’t have much option and they actually did touch, so that was silly driving.

“Max let himself down there. He’s got such brilliance and clearly such a massive competitive spirit, but I don’t think that was something to be proud of what he did there.”

Verstappen’s actions came just a few days after a controversial defence in Austin went in his favour as he stuck to the wording of the FIA’s Driving Guidelines, despite having also run wide while defending against Norris.

As a result, Hill said the regulations are proving somewhat unclear and said the sport has gone down the wrong direction with over-prescribing what is and isn’t allowed.

“The question is: what is within the regulations? And the regulations are a little bit murky. They’re not terribly clear,” he said.

“This is the thing that’s frustrating for everyone because we look at that and, really, that shouldn’t be allowed but then, if the rule says you’ve got to be ahead at the apex, the other guy has to then lift off.

“We had a lot of discussion about whether or not Lando, in the first instance at Turn 4, accelerated to go around the outside of Max and then the argument was would he have made the corner?

“But that’s not the issue. The issue is the driver’s behaviour on the track, and this is something that I don’t think you can scientifically or legally define – it is simply a view of the stewards.

“This comes back to another large issue, which has to do with the role of the driver stewards. The driver stewards were originally brought in, which is a good idea, to bring in stewards, to help stewards make a decision on driving issues on which they had very little experience or knowledge.

“The idea was to bring in drivers who raced it at that level, in Formula 1, and were able to say: ‘When I look at that, I think that’s right or wrong.’

“What happened was those driver stewards who were enlisted to advise the stewards became stewards themselves, and so now they’re bound by all the other regulations and jobs and responsibilities that the stewards have.

“So they’re no longer driver stewards as such. They’re just the same as the other stewards.

“Let’s say Martin Brundle was the guy advising the stewards, he would say, ‘I don’t like the look of that’, which he did in the grand prix. He would look at it and go: ‘No, that’s not right. That can’t be right.’

“We can also apply that view to say Lewis’s late change of direction when he was being passed by George Russell down the straight and I have to say I saw that and I just thought that was a little bit naughty.

“Now, if you’re a steward, you’ve got to try and make a decision, but if this driver who is giving you feedback from experience and years and years of watching grand prix racing looks at that and goes, ‘No, that’s really naughty. That shouldn’t happen’, then that enables you much more easily to then make a decision.

“You don’t have to go through the wording of the regulations because, once you go down that road, you’re lost.

“You’ll be there forever, and it’ll be discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

“You’re just going to go down the legal route. That’s where I think it’s gone wrong. The more regulations you put in, the more loopholes you create. So I think it’s a big can of worms.”