{"id":28800,"date":"2023-04-29T21:30:02","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T21:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/motor-racing-verstappen-fumes-at\/"},"modified":"2023-04-29T21:36:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T21:36:23","slug":"motor-racing-verstappen-fumes-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/motor-racing-verstappen-fumes-at\/","title":{"rendered":"Motor racing-Verstappen fumes at Russell after sprint clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alan Baldwin<\/p>\n

(Reuters) – Max Verstappen swore angrily at Mercedes rival George Russell after a first lap clash in Saturday’s Baku sprint race ripped a hole in the Formula One champion’s Red Bull.<\/p>\n

The Dutch driver, who still finished third in a race won by Mexican team mate Sergio Perez, refused to let the matter drop despite later taking back the place after a safety car deployment.<\/p>\n

“I don’t understand how he can keep the position when he’s damaging my car,” he said over the radio.<\/p>\n

When the Dutchman regained the place Verstappen was congratulated pointedly by the team for a “lovely job, without contact as well”.<\/p>\n

Verstappen and Russell exchanged words after the race, television microphones picking up Verstappen hinting at future revenge and calling Russell a ‘dickhead’ as the Briton walked away.<\/p>\n

“I respect all the drivers a lot and its a bit of commonsense as well what you do on the first lap,” Verstappen told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

“They (Mercedes) are off the pace and to risk that much in lap one is not very rewarding because I will get him anyway within a few laps.<\/p>\n

“He tells me ‘Yeah, I got cold tyres’. We all have cold tyres, that’s not an excuse. I don’t like it when somebody just has that kind of reaction ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’ and just walks off.<\/p>\n

“I would try to fight but not run into someone, that’s not what you want to do. That’s something maybe you also learn over time.”<\/p>\n

Russell, who finished fourth for a team playing catch-up after a disappointing start to a season so far dominated by Red Bull, defended himself separately and said he was there to fight.<\/p>\n

“There was a lot of Fs and whatnot from his side,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I was surprised he was so angry to be honest. He still finished the race in P3. He’s got enough experience to know that if you’re trying to overtake a guy on the outside there’s a risk the guy on the inside is going to run wide into you.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think anything would have been any different had the positions been reversed.”<\/p>\n

Red Bull boss Christian Horner said the hole in the bodywork had cost Verstappen three quarters of a second in lap time at least, leaving aside other complications with cooling going out of control.<\/p>\n

“I think he voiced his opinion to George, it was probably a good idea he (Russell) left his crash helmet on,” he quipped of the post-race exchange.<\/p>\n

Verstappen starts from the front row in Sunday’s main grand prix, alongside Ferrari’s pole-sitter Charles Leclerc, with Russell lining up 11th.<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)<\/p>\n

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By Alan Baldwin (Reuters) – Max Verstappen swore angrily at Mercedes rival George Russell after a first lap clash in Saturday’s Baku sprint race ripped a hole in the Formula One champion’s Red Bull. The Dutch driver, who still finished third in a race won by Mexican team mate Sergio Perez, refused to let the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3S06D-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28802,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28800\/revisions\/28802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}