A furious Max Verstappen accused the FIA stewards of “killing” Formula 1 after he was awarded a five-second time penalty post-race for going off track and gaining an advantage as he passed Kimi Raikkonen for third on the last lap of the United States Grand Prix.
The Dutchman had already made a remarkable recovery from 16th on the grid to run sixth after just 10 laps at the Circuit of the Americas, after taking a grid drop for further exceeding his engine allocation.
He would then switch to a two-stop strategy to try and disrupt the battle ahead for second between the two Ferraris and Valtteri Bottas, with Sebastian Vettel pitting to cover the threat of the Red Bull.
After dispatching Bottas’ Mercedes, Verstappen closed in on Raikkonen for the final lap and would make a bold move through the long, high-speed sweeps on Turns 16-18, putting all four wheels inside the kerb of Turn 17 in the process.
It would be that infringement that the stewards would penalise which is usually a clear-cut decision, but following the precedent that had been set all weekend until that point by Race Director Charlie Whiting, it was that which infuriated the 20-year-old.
“I’m feeling good personally. Of course, a big shame that you miss out on the podium afterwards,” Verstappen said describing his initial feelings.
“They take you away again. It’s just one idiot steward up there who makes the decisions against me, also in Mexico,” Max recalled, “Now I get a five-second penalty and a penalty point, for what?
“At the end of the day, everybody’s running wide everywhere, there are no track limits and then you do something like that in front of world TV.
“You pick someone out from the podium again and tell them to go away. At the end of the day, I still had a great race. I’m happy with fourth. Just the way they did it is unbelievable.”
The Malaysian Grand Prix winner believed it was pointless Red Bull trying to overturn the decision, claiming the FIA “decide and you can’t do anything against them” in response, more generally, he also sees such decisions after dramatic moments as ruining the spectacle for those watching.
“What can you do? It’s not good for the crowd. I really hope next year nobody is coming because, like this, the sport doesn’t make sense,” Verstappen stated.
“Everyone is loving it, great action. You go five or 10 centimetres in the inside of the kerb, everyone is running wide everywhere, nobody’s saying anything, like in qualifying at Turn 19 you could just run wide wherever you liked and they killed the race basically like that.”
