22/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Max Verstappen defends radio rants. "If some people don't like that then stay home," snaps the world champion.
While Will Joseph was appealing to Lando Norris' better nature, coming close to offering the Briton a puppy if he would simply hand the lead back to his teammate, Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase were going at it like a couple in the last desperate throws of a marriage.
"It's quite impressive how we managed to get undercut," complained the Dutchman after being undercut by Lewis Hamilton. "It completely f***** my race."
Later, when Lambiase sarcastically suggested that he was pushing his tyres too hard, too early, the world champion snapped: "No mate, don't give me that s*** now. You guys gave me this s*** strategy, OK? I'm trying to rescue what's left."
Finally, in the aftermath of the clash with Lewis Hamilton which effectively ended his race, Verstappen suggested that the Mercedes driver had moved under braking.
"I'm not even going to get into a radio fight with the other teams, Max," responded Lambiase. "We'll let the stewards do their thing. It's childish on the radio, childish."
While Lando Norris proved not to be quite as temperamental, eventually yielding the lead to his McLaren teammate and thus only taking 8 points out of his lead as opposed to 15, at race end Verstappen's mood hadn't softened. When it was suggested that his radio messages were disrespectful to his team, the Dutchman walked away, saying: "They can all f*** off!"
Prior to that, when asked about the clash with Hamilton, he said: "I got a lot of s*** thrown at me in Austria with people saying moving under braking, blah, blah, blah! I am positioning my car on the initial movement and then I keep it straight.
"Today, under braking he just kept turning to the right and that is why I also locked up because I was going for the move, but I saw the car on the outside kept coming at me. Otherwise, we would've already crashed before. I had to stop the car so that is why I locked up."
Subsequently, having calmed down, he told Sky Sports: "Of course I'm not happy. On a day when we're already lacking pace compared to McLaren, you try and hope we do the right things with the strategy which today was not the case.
"To be undercut was not ideal but maybe you get caught out, ok. We tried to go a bit longer but my pace was not very good.
"I'm realistic. Today we couldn't have beaten the McLarens, but a P3 was on the cards if we would have been on it a bit more."
"Max was frustrated, which you can understand," said Christian Horner as he sought to calm the situation. "He has a very direct line of communication with his engineer. So that's something that they'll discuss between the two of them."
Asked about Lambiase's "childish" comment, Horner said: "I think that GP at that point wasn't actually referring to Max. I think he was referring to others on the radio complaining about penalties. So, I don't think GP's reference at that point was in reference to Max but others obviously goading for penalties because the stewards are listening to the radio as well.
"They've been together for eight years," he added. "There are things that we could have done better in the race today but it's something we'll talk about as a team."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring here.