Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen finished Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix in the same place he started, fifth, despite being handed a tern second time penalty for taking his teammate out on the opening lap.
According to the young Dutchman, he was squeezed wide on the first lap and that was what brought Daniel into play. From there he was fighting for position with his teammate, a battle he won when Daniel spun and was forced to retire.
Max knows the accident was his fault, however in his defence he did try to avoid the sister Red Bull car, but by that stage he was simply a passenger and there was nothing he could do to stop what happened…
"I think the situation started from Turn 1. My start was actually quite good but then I got squeezed a bit wide on to the astro-turf and lost quite a bit of speed. Then Daniel and I were both fighting for position at Turn 2 so we braked quite deep into the corner. I had a car in front of me so I lost quite a bit of downforce and locked the front tyres, from there I was just a passenger,” he explained.
"I was trying to avoid Daniel of course but unfortunately that was not possible. It is never my intention to hit anyone, but especially not your team-mate, and especially with the relationship I have with Daniel, it's always really good and we can always have a laugh.”
"This is not nice and I apologise to Daniel for that and also to the team because we could have scored some good points here. I'll speak with Daniel in private and we'll sort it out. It was actually a positive Sunday in terms of pace. It's not nice what happened in the beginning of the race, so I'm of course not happy with that, but at least the car is moving forward."
