Angry Max Verstappen After F1 Hungarian Grand Prix: Some at Red Bull 'Not on the Same Wavelength'

• Max Verstappen spent time during the race at odds with his team over strategy calls.

• "The wrong strategy calls put me on the back foot."

• Verstappen made a bid for a third-place finish, but contact with Charles Leclerc ended that.

Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 championship advantage was trimmed from 84 to 76 points after a frustrating fifth-place finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix, in which he repeatedly expressed his blunt feelings to his Red Bull team over performance and strategy.

Red Bull lacked pace compared to McLaren frontrunners Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris throughout the weekend at the Hungaroring, but Verstappen still held third place during the first stint.

What irritated Verstappen early was an overcut pit strategy that meant he lost track positions to Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

“It’s quite impressive how we let ourselves get undercut, completely (ruined) my race,” railed Verstappen on the radio, before quick out-laps after his second stop led to a caution from his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase not to abuse the tires too early. “No mate, don’t give me that shit, you guys gave me this strategy that I’m trying to rescue,” came Verstappen’s retort.

Verstappen’s fresher tires were an advantage, but at a hot Hungaroring the rubber was susceptible to degradation with the situation exacerbated by the dirty air. Verstappen caught Leclerc, but when striving to pass his former title rival they collided, with Verstappen’s Red Bull tipped briefly skywards and suffering a hefty landing. That ended Verstappen’s prospects of third while he dropped behind Leclerc during the clash and wound up fifth.

“I think we could still have had a P3,” Verstappen said post-race. “But yeah, the wrong strategy calls put me on the back foot where I constantly had to fight people, try to overtake, but it didn't work. It was really hot. As soon as you get close to cars, the tires overheat and basically all the advantage you have with the tires is not working anymore.”

Verstappen emphasised that “maybe some people [at Red Bull] are not on the same wavelength” regarding the predicament it finds itself in, and that “maybe they didn’t realize following [other cars] would be so bad.”

On the clash with Hamilton, Verstappen was also frustrated: “I got a lot of shit thrown at me in Austria where people say I'm moving on the braking, blah blah blah. I'm positioning my car in the initial movement and then I keep it straight. But today, under braking, he just kept turning to the right. And that's why I also locked up because I was of course going for the move but I see the car on the outside just keeps coming at me. And otherwise, we would have crashed already before but I had to stop the car and that's why I had to lock up.”

Stewards investigated the clash but deemed that no further action was necessary, with Hamilton explaining that it “felt like a racing incident and it's easy to make mistakes like that. I don't feel there should be any hostility, but of course, from his side, there always will be.”

Verstappen went on to defend his terse exchanges with Red Bull over the radio.

“Of course I'm annoyed, but I've been annoyed before,” he said. “Sometimes you press in the radio to voice your opinion and that's what I did today. I'm hoping that maybe the second pit stop would be a better call. But it wasn't. For me that is not distracting when I'm driving. Of course I'm annoyed, but you also then focus back on what you have to do and that's of course control the car.”