The Stewards do not consider this to be a typical case of “changing direction under braking” although it is our determination that the driver of Car 44 could have done more to avoid the collision.
I’m honestly a bit surprised. Saying Lewis could have done more to avoid is irrelevant to if Max caused anything. Max was never going to make that corner at that speed. So long as Lewis wasn’t weaving under braking, it is my understanding he can pretty much take the corner how he wants to. I’m not an encyclopedia for past incidents, but I think drivers have been penalized for behavior similar to what Max did in the past.
On overall balance I think it’s not too wild to filter this as a racing incident and leave it there, but I agree that even suggesting Lewis should have done more is strange. It’s definitely on Max here.
I feel like its rare they don’t blame one driver for late race incidents. With no evidence or examples, I feel like I’ve seen more questionable incidents lead to penalties. I know they say they don’t take outcome into consideration, but both cars drove away mostly undamaged and Max lost a few places.
If Max had taken them both out, which was entirely possible, then we’d be looking at this very differently. He’s definitely very unsettled now which is showing in his driving and radio
This is going to keep happening as the cars are a lot closer at the front than they have been for years unless the FIA start clamping down on it. You can’t overtake if you can’t make the corner and you cannot make the corner if you lock up both fronts because you went it far too hot. Even if Lewis braked to a standstill Max would have still locked up and over shot as he did earlier in the race
He clearly lost control of his vehicle.
This race I was surprised by two things: how easily Max lost his chill and that this incident wasn’t punished.
I things keep going like this, the constructors might be in danger, but Max himself is comfortably ahead. But if he always removed around and damages morale like that the moment he’s not ahead, that will drag the team down.
And how TF could a dive bomb with contact like that go unpunished? At first I thought Max was out to get Lewis - it looked more like a soccer tackle than an attempt to navigate the corner. Is this really how we’re racing in the fastest series? Crazy.
And how TF could a dive bomb with contact like that go unpunished?
So if Lewis avoided the contact, which believe me he could have easily, should there have been no pen¿?
Lando’s 2nd divebomb in Austria was very similar(with both fronts locked up and coming in way too hot) , the difference just being that verstappen opened his steering and avoided Lando. There was not even a discussion if that was a dangerous move.
I find it very hypocritical that people’s(including the stewards) opinion changes wildly depending on the outcome even though everybody preaches that the penalty shouldn’t depend on the outcome
This race Verstappen seemingly got emotional about all that went wrong internally at Red Bull this season. We’ve seen him fuming on the radio before, but today it impacted his actual racecraft leading to mistakes we admittedly rarely see by Verstappen (some people mindlessly echo Crofty seemingly knowing exactly how much sleep Verstappen needs, lol).
Also, while I like GPs passive-aggressive banter, it didn’t really help to calm Verstappen down today. It likely made it worse.
I don’t think Hamilton could’ve done a lot more besides moving further to the outside, but I don’t think he expected Verstappen to lock up so it would’ve been insanely hard to react to. Calling this a racing incident is honestly fine I think. The divebomb was optimistic at best, but I’ll say that this was driver error instead of malicious intent or intentional rule-breaking.
While it’s still highly unlikely that Verstappen switches teams anytime soon, it might not be as far-fetched as we thought. I’d honestly love to see him in a different team like Mercedes.
Will be interesting to see how good Red Bull will be at Spa.
