Yahoo Autos Verstappen tells off critics as he fumes over Red Bull’s poor strategy
Max Verstappen says any critics of his strong radio messages to Red Bull “can all f*** off” as he was left annoyed by the team’s strategic calls in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
McLaren secured a one-two but Verstappen slipped from third on the grid to finish fifth, partly due to a late collision with Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen was having to try and pass Hamilton for third on the road having already cleared Charles Leclerc in the final stint, but was annoyed that Red Bull put him in positions to need to make overtakes and conceded track position twice through the pit stop phase.
“A tough [race], of course. We didn’t have the pace to fight McLaren today, but then I think we could still have had a P3,” Verstappen said. “But 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.
“Of course I’m annoyed, but I’ve been annoyed before. Sometimes you press on 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.”
When it was put to Verstappen that some of his radio messages — including one to his race engineer that said, “No mate, don’t give me that bulls***. You guys gave me this f***ing strategy, OK? I’m trying to rescue what’s left. F*** sake” — were deemed by some as going too far and disrespecting the team, he replied: “They can all f*** off.”
Verstappen was also unhappy at the incident with Hamilton at Turn 1, saying it was a case of moving under braking, despite the stewards disagreeing and later taking no further action.
“I got a lot of s*** thrown at me in Austria where people say I’m moving on the braking, blah blah blah,” he said. “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 going for the move, but I see the car on the outside just keeps coming at me. Otherwise, we would have crashed already before but I had to stop the car, and that’s why I had to lock up.”
