Under fire from the FIA, Verstappen dodged questions about Russell clash and blamed tyre strategy for Red Bull’s poor race pace.
Max Verstappen was handed a 10-second penalty after the race and was questioned about the intentional nature of his collision with George Russell in Barcelona.
The visibly irritated Dutch driver chose not to comment, knowing he could be facing serious consequences from the FIA, including a possible suspension for the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix.
“Does it matter? I’d rather talk about the race than a single moment,” he replied.
Pressed for more, he shifted the discussion to his gap with the McLaren F1 cars.
“If there are title hopes, we are far too slow to fight for the title. I think that was clear again today.”
“We tried to go for three stops; I thought it was pretty good and quite competitive in spirit, and we also needed it because our tyres were degrading quite a lot. It was good, it worked for us, it was a proper race and I loved it, but we didn’t get the reward.”
“It was good, but unfortunately, the safety car came out at the end and we ran out of fresh tyres, and the hard tyre clearly wasn’t the right one.”
“With six laps to go, everyone can go flat out, and I was very limited on grip with the hard.”
Regarding his stop under the safety car, which may not have been necessary, he added, “We need to review the situation. Of course, new tyres, or at least newer ones, also make a small difference.”
“I think no one really expected the hard tyres to be that poor. Maybe it would have been better to stay out, sure, but it’s obviously easier to say now.”
And he collided with Leclerc at the restart.
“I had a big scare in the final corner. The hard tyres had very little grip, so it was painful. Again, we didn’t have any tyres left. In hindsight, it would have been better to stay out, but it’s easy to say after the fact. The hard tyre put us in that situation.”
Asked again about the frustration he felt in the car at the end of the race and the deliberate collision: “Really? That’s your opinion, let’s leave it at that.”
“I don’t need to say anything about it. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because you can’t criticise anything.”
For Yuki Tsunoda, who was running at the back of the pack without a chance to score points, the response was brief.
“The safety car didn’t help, and without it there was potential to score points. But since FP1, the pace was good on the long runs, although it wasn’t the pace we needed in qualifying and it didn’t improve the outlook.”
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