Before Max Verstappen had his capital freak, an extremely dangerous action had occurred at the start/finish. Because at full speed, touch between the world champion and Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc occurred, which luckily went out. “Charles just rammed me on it,” Verstappen sparked to his team.
The Red Bull Pilot almost lost its car from control after the Safety car phase. In the last curve, he had quite a moment of horror on his hard tires that Leclerc wanted to take out, which immediately moved next to Verstappen. With the maneuver, there was actually a slight touch between tires and chassis.
“To be honest, I don’t know what happened there,” Verstappen describes the scene from his point of view. “It was really strange. The move was almost almost through, and suddenly he pulled to the left – that could have ended violently. Really strange. I don’t know what was going on.”
For Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, it looked as if Leclerc had moved left-that’s why the matter was examined by the commissioners. However, these spoke no punishment against one of the two drivers.
“Auto 1 lost the traction in curve 14 and therefore had to defend his position against Auto 16,” says the description of the commissioners. “Auto 16 then tried to overtake on the start-finish line. Both vehicles moved slightly towards each other, which led to a slight touch.”
“Both drivers were of the opinion that this was an avoidable collision that could have potentially lead to a serious accident, but neither of them were bought alone or mostly the guilt. Under these circumstances, no further measure was taken.”
Leclerc: “Max wanted to push me inside”
Leclerc himself defends his maneuver: “Max wanted to push me inwards where the whole rubber is, and I didn’t want to go too far. So I tried to push him to the left,” said Monegasse. In addition, both tried to catch the McLaren slipstream in front of them. “There was a little touch, but luckily without consequences.”
The Ferrari driver can understand that Verstappen complained to the radio: “If it had been the other way around, I would probably have sparked – you finally fight for third place,” he says. “Everyone tries everything to get the position back. And I think he knew that it would be difficult with his tires on the track.”
“I overtook on the inside, he pushed me on the dirty side, but I was faster because of his mistake. Then I wanted to get the slipstream from the McLaren, I was slightly pulled to the left, he didn’t want to move at all – there was a little touch, but nothing special.”
Max on hards: Leclerc lurked for his chance
Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur says that the team did not even notice the touch. When analyzing the recordings, he saw that Leclerc’s steering wheel position was “at zero”. “It was not a incident,” he waves.
“I understand that you (Red Bull; note of the editor) are applied after the last two or three rounds, but that had nothing to do with Charles.”
In the end, Leclerc brought the maneuver to the podium, whereby he can thank Red Bull for the strategy decision to give verbal taps for the last round tall tires.
“When the engineers told me that Max was on fresh hards in the last stint – I don’t know if they had a choice – I was pretty optimistic because I knew how bad the hard thing was,” he says.
“I knew I needed a good restart, and maybe there was a chance – and it was there too.”