Red Bull Honda F1 Max Verstappen said he knew that Steward wasn’t on his side at the F1 Qatar Grand Prix, so he focused on his driving to overcome the obstacles.
Max Verstappen, who was originally scheduled to start on the second grid, was penalized for being demoted to the fifth grid because he did not respect double yellow in qualifying.
The decision infuriated Red Bull Honda F1 and team boss Christian Horner ranted Marshall for warning.
However, he said that the penalty was inevitable for Max Verstappen, and hinted at his prejudice against himself.
“I wasn’t surprised there,” Max Verstappen told Sky F1 when asked about the five-grid demotion penalty.
“I already knew from last night that I wouldn’t get a present from them, so there was no problem.”
Max Verstappen was reluctant to dig deeper into the topic that Steward didn’t like, but further confirmed that he felt he was being treated harshly.
When asked if he felt that the interaction with the stewards was generally tough, Max Verstappen commented, “I don’t want to talk too much, because I don’t want to talk anymore and please someone.”
“But that’s not great, of course.”
Max Verstappen started from the 7th grid, but concentrated on the race and achieved the 2nd place podium and the fastest lap. Lewis Hamilton, who won the championship, was not good at it, but he reduced the loss to 6 points.
“I was very motivated to move forward anyway after I knew I was starting from the 7th, which is exactly what we did,” said Max Verstappen.
“The first lap was good and I was in second place on the fifth lap and I was just trying to close the gap. That was what I did throughout the race and they prevented me from making additional stops.”
“And it gave me the fastest lap at the end, so I’m definitely happy with it.”
Max Verstappen finally finished more than 25 seconds behind Lewis Hamilton with an additional pit stop, but before that, the gap was relatively stable around “7-8 seconds”. ..
Given that Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton had a pace advantage in qualifying and racing, Max Verstappen says he is happy with the show.
“Of course the gap was a bit bigger than the whole race because I made an additional stop,” said Max Verstappen.
“Overall, it was about 7-8 seconds throughout the race, so it’s not that bad.”
“It was a little too late, so of course it was tricky in the post-qualifying race, but we need to stay focused.”
“In the remaining two races, a lot can happen in qualifying and anything is possible.”
Category: Category: F1 / Max Verstappen / Red bull / Honda F1 / F1 Qatar GP
