Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton may not be fighting for the Formula 1 World Championship in 2022, but the mutual teasing between the two camps will continue unchanged this year. On Thursday in Austria it was about the furious last laps in Silverstone and a comparison to the Verstappen-Hamilton crash in Silverstone 2021.
Because Hamilton had said in Silverstone after his duel with Charles Leclerc that the duel with the Ferrari driver was “very reasonable”, and that in turn was “clearly very different from last year”.
Verstappen, in turn, now counters: “I think it’s nice that at 37 you can obviously still learn how to hit the apex of a curve. He’s learning, and that’s positive. That’s also a nice sign for all young drivers, who now know that you can still learn something at 37.”
What the Red Bull driver is suggesting: Hamilton was not at the apex of the curve in 2021, but let himself be carried out too far and provoked the collision. “It’s good that he’s found the apex now,” he says. “You can clearly see from the pictures that his line was different than last year.”
“Charles,” argues Verstappen, “gave him even less space than I did a year ago. That says it all. Basically, we don’t have to talk about it anymore anyway, because it was he who got a penalty back then. “
When asked whether it was smart to pour oil on the fire with such statements before hundreds of thousands of Dutch people could turn the Red Bull Ring into a cauldron for Hamilton on Sunday, Verstappen replied dryly: “He has to live with that.”
The provocations are bilateral anyway. On Thursday, Hamilton, confronted with the statement by Red Bull team boss Christian Horner that Mercedes gave Ferrari the race at Silverstone by choosing the wrong tires, said that he does not listen to what “this guy” (Horner) has to say.
Conversely, Verstappen says of the criticism of the flexible underbodies, which sounds the loudest from Mercedes: “That’s what I don’t understand, that they are complaining about flexible underbodies, while they themselves have the most flexible underbody.”