Max Verstappen repeated his claim he is not allowed to be critical of stewarding decisions after being penalised in the Spanish Grand Prix.
The stewards handed the Red Bull driver a 10-second time penalty for colliding with George Russell during today’s race.
Verstappen’s Red Bull team had erroneously advised him to let Russell past after the pair clashed at turn one earlier in the race. However after Verstappen backed off to allow Russell alongside him at turn five, he ran wide and collided with the Mercedes.
Russell accused his rival of deliberately causing the collision. However Verstappen refused to discuss the incident.
“I don’t need to say anything about it,” he told the official F1 channel. “It doesn’t matter anyway, we can’t be critical about anything.”
Verstappen gave the same reason when he refused to discuss another penalty after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. At the time this was seen as a reference to new rules regarding driver conduct introduced by the FIA. However the sport’s governing body has revised and softened those rules since then.
He endured a difficult end to the race after the Safety Car was deployed with 11 laps to go. While other drivers switched to soft tyres, Verstappen’s most suitable rubber was the hard compound.
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He almost lost control at the final corner after the restart and was passed by Charles Leclerc, then came under attack from Russell.
“I had a big moment there in the last corner,” he said. “Unfortunately, the hard tyres had very low grip, so that was quite painful.
“But basically we’d just run out of tyres. I mean, in hindsight, was it better to [not pit]? Maybe, I don’t know. It’s always easy to say afterwards. But because of those hard tyres you get into those situations.”
Penalty box
Did the stewards issue the correct penalty for Verstappen’s clash with Russell at turn five? Cast your vote below and have your say in the comments.
Verstappen’s penalty for colliding with Russell was:
- No opinion (0%)
- Far too lenient (65%)
- Slightly too lenient (18%)
- Correct (13%)
- Slightly too harsh (2%)
- Far too harsh (2%)
Total Voters: 260
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