Verstappen questions racing standards after his incident with Russell
On the back of a hectic end to his Spanish Grand Prix, reigning champion Max Verstappen refused to comment on his incident with Mercedes driver George Russell, but he questioned racing standards, suggesting that he is unsure "what is allowed, and what isn't."
Reigning F1 champion Max Verstappen was in contention for victory at the Spanish Grand Prix as he opted for an ambitious three-stop strategy.
However, a late safety car saw the field close up, and the Dutchman suffered a huge oversteer exiting the final corner as the safety car peeled into the pits. As a result of it, he lost his third place to Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc.
Mercedes driver George Russell also launched multiple attacks on Verstappen. Red Bull instructed Verstappen to hand the place back to Russell following their scarp at Turn 1.
With just three laps left to go, the Dutchman slowed down at Turn 5, and Russell completed the move on the outside, but the reigning champion appeared to speed back up again, leading to contact between the pair.
The four-time F1 champion would eventually let Russell through into Turn 11, but the stewards elected to hand out a ten-second time penalty to Verstappen for causing a collision at Turn 5.
Pressed on to comment on his incidents with Russell in the closing stages of the Barcelona race, Verstappen noted: "Does it matter? Yeah, okay, that's great. I mean, I prefer to speak about the race than just one single moment.
“But honestly I think the biggest issue that we have is just the racing standards. What is allowed, what isn't, is not very natural and that is quite frustrating.”
“We tried to do a three-stop and I think it was quite good. It was quite racy, but we also needed it because we actually had quite a bit of degradation on the tyres. So I think that was good.
“Unfortunately, then of course the safety car came out at the end and we basically ran out of tyres. And the hard tyre was clearly not the right tyre. I mean, when you only have six laps to go, everyone can go flat out. I was severely grip limited on the hard," Verstappen told to Sky Sports F1.
