29/07/2021
NEWS STORY
Insisting that he wants to move on from the controversial Silverstone clash, Max Verstappen remains critical of his rival's post-race celebrations.
Other than the crash itself, one of the bones of contention between Mercedes and Red Bull, post-Silverstone, was the German team's celebrations after winning the race.
Though Max Verstappen and his team voiced immediate outrage over the celebrations, Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff insists his team had been given the all-clear.
"We had the feedback from senior management of Red Bull that Max was fine," the Austrian told Motorsport.com last week. "Christian mentioned it to Michael Masi on the intercom that he's unharmed and fine, and the FIA gave us similar feedback.
"At no point would we have celebrated if Max would have been injured," he added. "I think that's very important to understand."
Speaking at today's press conference however, Verstappen insisted that the celebrations were "disrespectful".
"If you mean disrespectful, it's when one guy is in the hospital and the other one is waving the flag around like nothing has happened while you pushed the guy into the wall at 51G," said Verstappen, speaking publicly for the first time since the crash.
"Not only that, just the whole reaction of the team besides that," he added. "That's not how you celebrate the win, especially a win how they got it.
"That's what I found really disrespectful, 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."
Responding to claims that Hamilton had called him, Verstappen said: "I don't need to go into details about that but we did have a chat.
"Anyway can't change the outcome," he added. "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."
Check out our Thursday gallery from the Hungaroring, here.