Verstappen slams Hamilton penalty & win celebrations at Silverstone

Max Verstappen hasn’t held back as he slammed Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes for the events of the British Grand Prix.

On Thursday, the Dutchman gave his first comments to the media since being tagged by the seven-time world champion on the opening lap at Silverstone, with the resulting crash putting him in the hospital for checks.

And the Red Bull driver began by defending his moves against Hamilton, who claimed a crash between himself and Verstappen was “bound to happen” due to Max’s overaggressive approach.

“I fought hard, I defended hard, but not aggressive because if it would have been aggressive I could have squeezed him into the inside wall,” he said.

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“I did give him space and then I just opened up my corner. When you then commit on the inside as he did and not back out expecting that you can do the same speed on that angle that I had on the outside you are going to of course crash into me.

“I’m on the outside, I’m opening up my corner not expecting him to commit and he just understeered into the rear of my car. There’s not much I can do I think.”

The stewards did agree Hamilton was more to blame for the incident, but the resulting penalty didn’t stop the Briton from going to claim victory at Silverstone, passing Charles Leclerc late on.

Since then Red Bull has lodged a request to review with the FIA in the hope of getting a harsher punishment, with that hearing taking place as this is being written.

“I don’t think the penalty was correct because basically, you take out your main rival, and especially with the speed we have with our cars, we are miles ahead of the third-best team,” Verstappen said.

“We are easily 40-50 seconds ahead in normal conditions, so a 10-second penalty doesn’t do anything. So definitely that penalty should have been more severe.”

In his only comments after the race on Sunday via Twitter, Max heavily criticised the “unsportsmanlike” behaviour of Hamilton for celebrating his win wildly.

And the anger that was caused clearly hasn’t died down.

“It’s disrespectful when one guy is in the hospital and the other one is waving the flag around like nothing has happened after you pushed him into the wall with a 51G impact,” said Verstappen.

“And not only that, just the whole reaction of the team besides that, I think. That’s not how you celebrate the win, especially a win how they got it.

“So yeah, that’s what I found really disrespectful and in a way I mean it shows how they really are, you know. It comes out after a pressured situation. But I wouldn’t want to be seen like that.”

In his pre-Hungarian GP remarks for Red Bull, the 23-year-old indicated victory was his only focus rather than getting involved in “media hype”.

And after getting the emotion out of his system, Verstappen did end on a calmer note.

“You anyway can’t change the outcome,” he said. “I mean, I’m not happy with what happened there, especially to lose that many points due to someone else, but it’s what it is.

“I can’t really say a lot more about it, you know. I hit the wall quite hard, which is never what you want, but yeah, we’ll try, of course, have a good weekend here.”