George Russell said Max Verstappen’s collision with him in the closing stages of today’s race was an example of “how Max goes racing.”
Verstappen collided with Russell after slowing to let the Mercedes driver catch him at turn five late in the race. Red Bull had instructed Verstappen to let Russell by following an earlier incident between the pair at turn one.
“I just got crashed into,” Russell told the official F1 channel. “I don’t really know why or what the thinking was behind it.
“In the end, I’m glad I continued, with damage. Ultimately it punished him a lot more than me.”
“That’s how Max goes racing. He was in P4, I was in P5. I ended up P4 and he ended up in P10. From my side, I’m glad that I managed to finish the race. I’m not really sure what he was thinking because he cost himself and his team a lot of points. So no conversation [with him] really required.”
Verstappen refused to answer whether the contact was intentional. “Does it matter?” he answered when asked by Sky.
The Red Bull driver’s race began to go awry when he had to switch to a set of hard tyres when the Safety Car was deployed with 11 laps to go. While most drivers switched to soft tyres for the sprint to the flag, Red Bull put Verstappen on hards, informing him he had no sufficiently fresh sets of softs left.
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At the restart, Verstappen immediately came under attack from Charles Leclerc and George Russell. Leclerc passed him on the straight, making contact as he passed, and Russell dived down the inside of him at turn one.
Verstappen cut the corner and rejoined between Leclerc and Russell. He accused both of making contact with him and demanded Leclerc give third place back to him. However Red Bull feared Verstappen would be penalised for passing Russell off the track and ordered him to let the Mercedes through.
After furiously disputing their call, Verstappen did slow down approaching turn five and allowed Russell alongside him. He then drove wide in the corner and made contact with the Mercedes, re-passing him again. Further around the lap Verstappen slowed a second time and let Russell through.
The stewards subsequently cleared Verstappen over the original incident with Russell. They noted he therefore did not need to give up his position to Russell.
“Car 63 [Russell] attempted to overtake car one on the inside of turn one. While the front axle of car 63 was ahead of the mirror of car one [Verstappen] at the apex, the driver of car 63 momentarily lost control of the car and collided with car one, forcing it wide and into the escape road.
“Car one re-entered the track at turn three ahead of car 63. Given that the reason for car one being forced off the track was the loss of control and the resulting contact by car 63, car one did not deliberately leave the track.”
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