Max Verstappen defends himself from the incident with Norris: ‘Fighting hard for a victory, that’s how it should be’

Max Verstappen was the fifth classified in the Austrian Formula 1 Grand Prix. After leading most of the race, in defense against an attack from Lando Norris (McLaren/Mercedes) on lap 64, he exaggerated, causing a double collision between both, punctured a tire, and was penalized by ten seconds – a penalty that ultimately did not influence the result after the accident. On Red Bull Racing’s social media, the Dutchman reflected on what happened, defending the aggressive way he fought for victory against the British rival: – I am just very unfortunate about what happened, I believe. Now I had some more time to see things. I think in the beginning, the first attacks were from very far away, so whatever happened, happened. But then, I think where we touched, honestly it seemed a bit clumsy. When you’re in the car, you think at first, ‘Did I do something wrong? Did I not leave enough space?’ I gave half a car width or something like that. Of course, you can always evaluate or discuss what is the width of a car; honestly, I think I left the width of a car on the white line. And actually, you compete hard, I’m not here to give the width of two cars because I know he will overtake me on the exit. And you fight hard for a victory, I think that’s how it should be’. In Verstappen’s view, this is a situation that can happen in competition: ‘As a friend, you never want to collide, you never want to have an accident, but it happened today, ultimately it’s also part of racing although it’s not pleasant. I think we are both obviously disappointed with the outcome’. That being said, the three-time world champion acknowledged that there were many mistakes from Red Bull: ‘On our side, we also have to look at the whole race, because I think we did a lot of things wrong. We had two very bad pit stops, which basically put us behind, and that’s also why we were fighting until the end, because we had a very comfortable lead and I think we could have definitely had a slightly different race if we had executed it much better. So, there are definitely some things to look at and improve on for next week. Additionally, in terms of the car, I also felt that something went wrong after the first stint, where I was very comfortable, and somehow the balance of the car definitely changed a lot. So, there are some things to analyze for next week’.