Formula One wants gladiatorial drivers, sportspeople set apart, racing on the edge in the heat of battle, so it might be considered a little rich when the sport clutches at its pearls in distaste over Max Verstappen’s vehement swearing at last week’s Hungarian Grand Prix. It is impossible not to sense that the affront at his bad language is rather missing the point.

When Verstappen launched a tirade at his Red Bull team’s poor performance in Budapest, at one point including one “bullshit” and two “fucks” in the same breathless exposition of distaste, the team radio bleeper operative would have struggled to mash his button fast enough.

The 26-year-old world champion’s car, with upgrades fast-tracked to make it to Hungary, was ­underperforming and handling badly with the understeer that is an anathema to Verstappen. Strategy calls by the team only exacerbated the situation and led to him making an ill-timed lunge at Lewis Hamilton, a subsequent clash and a fifth-place finish.

With at least some sense of comic timing, his final word on the matter when it was put to him that critics believed he had gone too far and been disrespectful to his team, was pithy. “They can all fuck off,” he said.

F1 might have felt faint at the language and in the buildup to this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa has reportedly reminded teams that drivers are role models and should watch their language. Yet he is a grownup and you don’t get gladiators without a little blood being spilled. Of more weight is how angry and frustrated Verstappen was, how rattled he seemed at being on the back foot.

He was soundly beaten at the Hungaroring by a McLaren one-two of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, who have a car at least as quick, if not quicker than the Red Bull, a new experience after recent years. In 2022 Verstappen and the car were dominant, while last year he had 19 wins from 22 races. He has not been even moderately threatened by his teammate Sergio Pérez who is unlikely to be on Red Bull’s books after F1’s summer break which begins after Spa.

This season opened similarly with seven victories from 10 races, such that he still has a 76-point lead over Norris but with McLaren resurgent Verstappen knows he is in a fight such as he has not seen since he battled Hamilton tooth and nail for the title in 2021. On this evidence he is not handling it with quite the equanimity of the cakewalk to the title those past two seasons.

At Spa he said his anger was fuelled by a sense that he had been let down and left impotent. “I’m very driven like everyone else in the team, we want to try to be perfect,” he said. “Now I know that every single race to do that is very, very hard. We came close last year but when things are not going how they should have been it’s quite normal you can share your frustration with it. That’s what I did and also when you’re full of adrenaline and things are happening in the race that you’re not happy with, you voice your frustration.”

Related: Lando Norris says he is not proud of ignoring McLaren team orders

This weekend he and Red Bull face another test as he incurs a 10-place grid penalty for taking his fifth engine of the season, one more than the regulation four. The team opted to take the potential points damage in Belgium because of the propensity for overtaking at the track. Yet this task will be far from the blast through the Ardennes of the past two years where he won from 14th and sixth on the grid. This time McLaren and Mercedes will represent a tougher task and Verstappen may find frustration creeping in once again, especially if Norris manages to make hay out front.

He believes a win is out of reach, which may militate against the Dutchman once more kicking off but these are testing times. There are 10 races to go after Belgium and how the world champion’s temperament copes with what might be a feisty run-in should be absolutely (insert expletive here) fascinating.

There was some cause for optimism as he led the first practice session by half a second from Piastri. However, in the afternoon running qualifying sims, Norris and Piastri were on top with Verstappen third, two-tenths down, the top three looking closely matched on race pace.