The five-second penalty against Max Verstappen in the Formula 1 race in Saudi Arabia was the great excitement topic of the weekend. While you did not understand the Stewards’s judgment at Red Bull Racing, a former team manager and former driver find: the Dutchman was adequately or even punished too easily.
Ex-Formula 1 driver Martin Brundle believes that the five-second penalty against Max Verstappen was fully justified at the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia. The world champion had been punished after overtaking McLaren-Pilot Oscar Piatri in the first curve outside the route, but did not go back one afterwards.
“It was always clear: if you leave the route and have an advantage what was the case with him because he kept his position, then you have to return this position. The decision is in the end with the team. You decide whether to tell the driver to give back the position,” said Brundle in his “Sky Sports” analysis.
Brundle: Verstappen “plays with the system”
“He is on the outside and should be at least at the same height or at the front to justify his maneuver. But he was not. And if we are honest: If he had been a gravel bed there, he would not be in the situation in which he is now,” said Brundle with a view of Verstappen’s second place, which he brought to the finish despite five-second penalty.
Brundle thinks: “It would have been better to return the place than to risk a five-second penalty. But he is so clever and has so much control over the car that he plays with the system. But in that case he lost.”
Minardi: “Five seconds are too little”
While Brundle considers the punishment to be appropriate for Verstappen, ex -team boss Gian Carlo Minardi in his column explained that the Dutchman was still light -grid – too lightly.
“I do not agree with the punishment. I think that five seconds are too little if you look at how great your advantage was and it was at the beginning of the race. He had enough time to recover,” wrote the Italian.
According to Minardi, Verstappen in Dschidda should have received a passage penalty. “That would have been logical,” he said.