Charles Leclerc says Ferrari should be proud of its recovery in the Singapore Grand Prix but admits the race performance leaves him aware of the work needed to fight for regular wins. Ferrari had a strong pair of races in Monza and Baku, where …
Charles Leclerc says Ferrari should be proud of its recovery in the Singapore Grand Prix but admits the race performance leaves him aware of the work needed to fight for regular wins.
Ferrari had a strong pair of races in Monza and Baku, where Leclerc won and was second respectively, starting from pole position in the latter race. Heading to Singapore it was expected to be competitive again but a crash for Carlos Sainz in Q3 was followed by Leclerc getting his only lap deleted for exceeding track limits, although he fought back from ninth on the grid to finish fifth.
“Really good execution of the race,” Leclerc said. “Looking back at the [qualifying] data, maybe yes, the tires were a little bit cold but there was also a little bit of me locking up in Turn 1 and doing the track limits. So it was not all about tires and that put us on the back foot.
“So, a bit disappointed [with qualifying] because I think the potential was there to do something good this weekend. But on the other hand, sometimes it goes like that. A weekend relies on very fine details — one lap in Q3, you do one mistake on that exact lap and your whole weekend is taking a different turn, and that’s what happened for us. But we maximized and we should be proud of our race.”
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Leclerc was particularly quick after his pit stop when he managed to overtake Lewis Hamilton and reel in George Russell, but he believes the fact he couldn’t have competed with the McLarens or Max Verstappen shows the gap that Ferrari still needs to close.
“We were very fast in clean air, but I pushed quite a bit on my tires and then when it was time to try and overtake George towards the end I didn’t have my rear tires in great shape, so I couldn’t make the pass,” he said. “But we did a good job anyway.
“Still some work to do but that hasn’t changed for quite a long time. McLaren remains the car to beat — they’ve shown it again. Red Bull seems to be so strong with Max of course, and we seem to be the third or fourth. That doesn’t really change. I think in qualifying there was definitely room to do much better and maybe the first row was possible, but in the race, apart from being in front of George I don’t think we deserved to be on the podium with the pace we had.”
Max Verstappen says the disagreement with the FIA and Formula 1 over his use of swear words could have an influence on his future in the sport. The FIA summoned Verstappen and ordered him “to accomplish some work of public interest” as a result of …
Max Verstappen says the disagreement with the FIA and Formula 1 over his use of swear words could have an influence on his future in the sport.
The FIA summoned Verstappen and ordered him “to accomplish some work of public interest” as a result of using the f-word when describing his car during an official Singapore Grand Prix press conference on Thursday. The three-time world champion opted to limit his answers in official press conferences on Saturday and Sunday in response, and when carrying out his own separate media duties he suggested it’s a topic that he’s frustrated to have to deal with.
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“For sure, these kind of things definitely decide my future as well,” Verstappen said. “You know, when you can’t be yourself, or you have to deal with these kind of silly things. I think now I’m at the stage of my career that you don’t want to be dealing with this all the time. It’s really tiring.
“Of course, it’s great to have success and win races, but once you have accomplished all that winning championships and races, and then you want to just have a good time as well.
“Everyone is pushing to the limit. Everyone in this paddock, even at the back of the grid. But if you have to deal with all these kind of silly things, for me, that is not a way of continuing in the sport, that’s for sure.”
And Verstappen says he won’t change the way he acts during race weekends, because he wants to be as authentic as possible.
“I will always be myself. I will not, because of that, change how I am in my life anyway, but also how I’m operating here.
“At the end of the day, I don’t know how serious they would take that kind of stuff [a quit threat]. For me at one point, when it’s enough, it’s enough, and we’ll see. Racing will go on, F1 will go on also without me. It’s also not a problem for me. It’s how it is.”
Verstappen says his issue is not solely with the FIA but also with Formula One Management (FOM) and the way the entire sport operates as a whole, but that he is maintaining his approach to giving short answers in official commitments to emphasize his point.
“For me personally, there is absolutely no desire to then give long answers, when you get treated like that. I never really felt like I had a bad relationship with them. Even this year, I did voluntary work with junior stewards. I gave them a half an hour interview, like all set up, so I tried to help out.
“I’m not a difficult person who says no. ‘OK, sure, if that’s what you guys would like, I like to help out’, and then you get treated like that. Well, that’s just not how it works. So for me, it was quite straightforward because I know that I have to answer, but it doesn’t say how long you have to answer.”
Lando Norris admits he was likely pushing too hard at times in his run to a dominant victory at the Singapore Grand Prix, as two specific mistakes risked damaging his car. The McLaren driver led every lap and pulled over 20s clear of Max Verstappen …
Lando Norris admits he was likely pushing too hard at times in his run to a dominant victory at the Singapore Grand Prix, as two specific mistakes risked damaging his car.
The McLaren driver led every lap and pulled over 20s clear of Max Verstappen before his first pit stop, but then lost time locking up at Turn 14 and only just managing to keep his car out of the barrier. Later in the race Norris did, in fact, hit the wall with his right rear entering Turn 10, and he says it was a sign of how aggressive he was driving, trying to give himself a full pit stop in hand over the field.
“I was flat out,” Norris said. “I was probably pushing a bit too hard. It was definitely not like I was cruising. I was pushing to open up a gap, and at one point I wanted to try and open up a pit window to give myself an opportunity to maybe box at the end of the race for quickest lap if I needed to try and achieve that. Daniel [Ricciardo] stole that away from me at the end of the race.
“A tough one, but it wasn’t easy. The car was not easy to drive, especially on the hard tires. I struggled a lot more than what I did on the medium. With the traffic and things, it was a bit harder to manage the second half of the stint compared to the first, but I was pushing. Let me tell you, I was definitely pushing — probably too much, hence the mistakes I was making, or the two mistakes I made with the wall, but otherwise things were going well.”
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Despite those two incidents, Norris doesn’t believe there was any damage caused to his car and says he was slightly surprised by the way the car’s characteristics changed when approaching traffic.
“The team said that there was something with the front wing, maybe being a little bit off,” he said. “I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it, but hard to know. On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.
“As soon as I did that, and I think it was more… I was pushing, but also it was just as I was catching up to the dirty air from the cars ahead. Whether they were 3-4s ahead, it changes from the past 20 laps that I had. You have a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce, tires are going away a little bit; it just caught me out.
“It wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me, but I think the car was all good… A big thanks to the team.”
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says he will ask questions relating to Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest lap at the end of the Singapore Grand Prix, as it helped Red Bull. RB opted to pit Ricciardo from 18th place and fit a new set of soft tires to take the …
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says he will ask questions relating to Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest lap at the end of the Singapore Grand Prix, as it helped Red Bull.
RB opted to pit Ricciardo from 18th place and fit a new set of soft tires to take the fastest lap away from Lando Norris, a move he duly completed to prevent Norris scoring an extra point. It meant race-winner Norris only outscored Max Verstappen by seven points rather than eight, and Brown believes it highlights a problem with Red Bull owning two different teams.
“That’s a nice A/B team sporting thing that I didn’t think was allowed…” Brown told SiriusXM. “But hey, that’s not the first time we’ve seen it, probably won’t be the last.
“I’ll certainly ask some questions. It’s something I’ve spoken about in the past and I think it illustrates that it does happen, because I think you wouldn’t have made that pit stop to go for that. It’s not going to get anyone a point, so I think it does illustrate the issue around that topic.”
Brown raised concerns relating to Red Bull’s ownership of RB over the past year, but Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says the teams make their own decisions.
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“Racing Bulls stopped and did the fastest lap at the end of the race!” Horner also told SiriusXM. “There’s nothing more to it than that. Kevin Magnussen would have had it had he not gone wide earlier in the race and he has a Ferrari engine. Every team has its own independence.”
When it was put to Horner that Magnussen had to pit due to a puncture, while RB risked a car that was finishing 18th, he admitted the ownership situation would lead to scrutiny.
“Sure, sure. It’s always going to get raised because it’s the same ownership, so it’s inevitable that question’s going to get raised,” he said. “But Daniel’s lap in a grand prix car… He wanted to… Remember, he gets paid a bonus on a fastest lap.”
While Verstappen said he was thankful to Ricciardo for the move, Norris himself downplayed any frustration at the lost point.
“Well done, Daniel,” Norris said. “I don’t know. Nothing I can do, so good on him. I did my best at trying to get a quickest lap when the tires were in a good condition in the middle, but I can’t have them all. I’ve done my best at trying to get quickest laps over the last few weekends and I’ve been able to get them more often than not. But I can’t, on a hard tire in the middle of a stint, beat a guy on a new soft. That’s just life.”
Daniel Ricciardo says it’s realistic to expect he won’t be racing in Formula 1 again after the Singapore Grand Prix, and that he is at peace with losing his RB seat if it happens. Red Bull opted to stick with Sergio Perez when reviewing its driver …
Daniel Ricciardo says it’s realistic to expect he won’t be racing in Formula 1 again after the Singapore Grand Prix, and that he is at peace with losing his RB seat if it happens.
Red Bull opted to stick with Sergio Perez when reviewing its driver line-up at the start of August, leaving Ricciardo at RB but with Liam Lawson waiting for a potential race seat. While Yuki Tsunoda is confirmed for 2025, Ricciardo was expecting an answer on next year following the race in Singapore, but with sources suggesting he could be replaced before the next round — the U.S. Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas — he admits he has accepted that is likely to be the case.
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“Look, obviously there is a realistic chance [racing in Austin] is not going to happen,” Ricciardo said. “I think obviously it’s been a very race by race situation with Red Bull, I think for all of us in a way, obviously Checo as well, and at times it feels like it’s going one way, then it goes the other.
“Obviously there was a lot of emphasis on this weekend. I would have loved a better weekend and who knows if that would have changed anything or if the decision’s been made already prior to the weekend. I’m obviously prepared for it — that’s why over the weekend I tried to acknowledge a few things as well with myself.
“I think acknowledge also why I came back into the sport. Sometimes you see the big picture and I always said I don’t want to be a guy who’s just here on the grid and fighting for a point every now and then, which has kinda been how this year’s gone.
“Obviously this year the purpose was to try and do good enough to get back into Red Bull and fight for wins again, see if I’ve still got it. I felt like I came up short with that, so I think it’s then, ‘OK, what else am I fighting for here? What else is going to give me fulfillment?’
“I’ve been a young driver as well and at some point I don’t just want to take up space. Obviously you have to be selfish, but for me if I’m not able to fight at the front with Red Bull, I have to ask myself what am I staying on the grid for? That’s something I’ve also come to peace with.”
If this was Ricciardo’s last race, he went out with his name on the highlight list with fastest lap. Lionel Ng/Motorsport Images
Should it be Ricciardo’s final race in F1, he signed off with a fastest lap after pitting for soft tires from the back of the field and taking the extra point off winner Lando Norris. That ensured Max Verstappen’s championship lead is one point bigger than it would have been, and Ricciardo says he was aware that could be a factor in the decision.
“I had an idea but I also thought they were just letting me have some fun because we were a long way out of the points. We tried softs, trying to be a bit more aggressive at the start and knew it’d be a bit of a tricky place to overtake. So we never know what happens on lap 1.
“Our starts haven’t been great this year and we’re on the dirty side so we thought, OK, if we put a hard on we’re probably going to go backwards, so let’s put a soft on and see where it takes us and if it doesn’t do much for us we can try and pit early and maybe undercut a few cars.
“Look, at the end of the day we weren’t quick enough. I don’t know the full picture of Yuki [Tsunoda]’s race but also saw he was out of the points; maybe that’s also some confirmation that we didn’t quite have it today. So, at the end, fastest lap, kinda hoping Max wins by a point now as I’ve guaranteed myself a very nice Christmas present. So, sorry Lando!”
Lando Norris dominated the Singapore Grand Prix ahead of title rival Max Verstappen, taking another small bite out of the Dutchman’s points lead. Norris executed a perfect getaway from the line to hold the lead from pole position for the first time …
Lando Norris dominated the Singapore Grand Prix ahead of title rival Max Verstappen, taking another small bite out of the Dutchman’s points lead.
Norris executed a perfect getaway from the line to hold the lead from pole position for the first time in his career. Verstappen slotted n behind him and kept him honest in the opening laps, pushing the Briton into setting a faster pace than the field had expected in a race ordinarily dictated by bunching up the field by running at a pedestrian speed.
By lap 5, however, it was clear Norris had a little extra in reserve, breaking the DRS and extending his margin above 2s. In fact Norris’s advantage was even greater than it looked. Shortly afterwards the team asked him to increase the gap to 5s by around lap 15 to protect against the undercut. He easily beat the target, opening the required margin by lap 10, and by lap 15 he had 9s in hand.
The gap kept growing from there until, on lap 29, he was 22.7s ahead of Verstappen when the Dutchman dived into the pits.
This time Norris made a perfect getaway from pole, and it was all but game over for everyone else. Simon Galloway/Motorsport Images
Norris, who locked up and thought he’d damaged his front wing, stopped the following lap without losing the lead, his margin to Verstappen practically undiminished. From there it was an imperious cruise to the finish, with the Briton reducing his title deficit by seven points, down to 52 points.
“It was an amazing race.” he said. “The car was mega. I could push. We were flying the whole race.
“At the end we could just chill. Still tough — I’m a bit out of breath — but a fun one.”
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Verstappen was satisfied to finished second on what Red Bull Racing had expected to be its worst race of the season, this having been the only grand prix the team didn’t win last year.
“I think on a weekend we knew we were going to struggle, to be P2 is a good achievement,” he said. “Of course we’re not happy with second; now we just have to try and improve more and more.”
Oscar Piastri made it a double podium for McLaren after having to pass both Mercedes drivers in the second half of the race, having run deep before making his first pit stop.
Hamilton had started third but gambled on the soft tire for his opening stint. It forced him into an early stop, on lap 17, that left him defenseless to Piastri and his much fresher rubber.
Russell ran a more conventional strategy, stopping after 27 laps, but his Mercedes was no match for the McLaren, with Piastri showing similar pace to Norris when in clear air. By lap 45 the Australian was up into third, but with Verstappen 18s up the road, his charge ended there.
“It was a good recovery from qualifying yesterday,” Piastri said, having started fifth after failing to put together his fastest lap in Q3. “To get back to the podium is a great result.
“We had a really quick car underneath us and a good strategy to get past Mercedes. Thanks to the team. The car was exceptional this weekend, and some great points for the whole team.”
McLaren’s double podium extended the team’s advantage over Red Bull Racing to 41 points on the constructors’ title table.
Russell clung on to fourth ahead of the fast-finishing Charles Leclerc, who recovered from ninth to fifth in a case of what could have been with a better qualifying performance.
The Monegasque demonstrated the Ferrari car’s innate pace around this layout by biding his time until lap 37 before making his first stop and dropping only to eighth in the order. He made quick and easy work of Fernando Alonso and was team-ordered past teammate Carlos Sainz, who was recovering from a poor start, to sit himself behind the Mercedes drivers with the advantage of a considerable tire offset.
Hamilton was no match for Leclerc, and the Ferrari driver reached Russell’s gearbox with three laps remaining, but by then the best of his rubber had been used, and the Briton’s strong traction on corner exit retained him the place.
Hamilton finished a comfortable but disappointed sixth, down from third, ahead of Sainz, whose race was undone by running off the road at the first turn.
Alonso finished a solid eighth at the head of the midfield points finishers, seeing off Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez, the Red Bull Racing driver gaining three places from his underwhelming starting position.
Franco Colapinto was solid on his first visit to Singapore, finishing just 1.6s from a point.
Yuki Tsunoda finished 12th for RB ahead of Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas and Pierre Gasly down to 17th.
Daniel Ricciardo, in what could be his last grand prix start, finished 18th after starting on softs and being switched to a fruitless two-stop strategy later in the race. With nothing to lose, RB brought him in for a set of softs at the end of the race, with which the Australian set the fastest lap to deny Norris the bonus point for fastest lap, benefitting stablemate Verstappen’s title defense.
Kevin Magnussen and Alex Albon were the race’s only two retirements, the former after picking up a puncture and the latter with an overheating car early in the race.
Lewis Hamilton says his qualifying form has been a struggle this year but that his car came alive as he managed to secure a top three start at the Singapore Grand Prix. McLaren’s Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen to pole position, with Hamilton …
Lewis Hamilton says his qualifying form has been a struggle this year but that his car came alive as he managed to secure a top three start at the Singapore Grand Prix.
McLaren’s Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen to pole position, with Hamilton qualifying third, just over 0.3s adrift of his fellow Brit. Hamilton says he was finding the handling of his car difficult throughout the weekend until qualifying started, but then had far more confidence and was able to threaten the higher positions.
“Oh man, qualifying has been a disaster for me all year long and I’ve just been working and working and working trying to get myself back up there, and all of a sudden the car came alive in qualifying for the first time in a long time,” Hamilton said. “It was a little bit of a shame because we were getting into rhythm — it was the same for all of us, but getting that lap at the end was a little bit tricky.
“I think there was maybe a tiny bit more left in the car, but I’m really grateful for it. And the mechanics, we’ve been moving up and down on balance, we’ve changed everything this weekend on each day, and the mechanics have just been faultless, so I want to say a big thank you to them, and I hope that we’re in a good position to fight for the front tomorrow.”
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Although Norris had a clear advantage, Hamilton was a little over 0.1s away from Verstappen’s time and he says if he had put together a better final lap he could have beaten the Red Bull.
“I’m not saying it’s a surprise, but through the weekend so far, we were looking, well, I was looking particularly very poor,” he said. “This morning and all of yesterday, we were 1.2s off these guys. We arrived with a car that was massively understeery, and we just couldn’t dial anything in. No matter what we did, nothing changed.
“Made changes overnight, came here today, pretty much the same thing, and I was definitely shocked to see that we were still 1.2s behind Lando again. We just kept our heads down, kept not giving up, and we made some more changes and got into this session, and it was like night and day. Such a big difference.
“The car was all of a sudden alive, and I was able to go where I wanted to go. It was looking really strong throughout qualifying and I think [the crash in Q3 made it difficult] for all of us to put that final lap together.
“I think my lap was also nothing special — very difficult to get the tires perfect and not overslide them. I had a lot of snaps, so I think with a better job, maybe we could have been front row … but I don’t know whether or not we could have beaten [Norris] today. Still really, really happy.”
Lando Norris is confident he has the race pace to pull away from the field in the Singapore Grand Prix, as long as he can hold onto the lead from pole position. The McLaren driver has never led at the end of an opening lap whenever he has started …
Lando Norris is confident he has the race pace to pull away from the field in the Singapore Grand Prix, as long as he can hold onto the lead from pole position.
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The McLaren driver has never led at the end of an opening lap whenever he has started from pole position in either a race or a Sprint event, a run that most recently saw Max Verstappen overtake him at Zandvoort. On that occasion, Norris repassed Verstappen in the opening stint and went on to dominate the race, and he believes he has the performance again to pull clear if he can retain position at the front.
“We’ve been very good all weekend,” Norris said. “People have caught up — clearly Max improved a lot from yesterday into today. Mercedes as well — they were very quick in Q2, so they were there on my tail, a bit close for my liking, comparing to what I had in kind of FP3 and things.
“I’m confident that the car’s good in both quali and race. We showed that already on Friday. So confident if I can just get ahead, then I get my head down and can go away.”
Despite feeling that he didn’t put together his best lap in Q3, Norris still rates his pole position highly because of the risk of making a mistake on the only run at the end of the session, as he beat Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
“When I get as many as they both have, then maybe some will feel a bit crap comparing to others! But poles still are pretty awesome for me and you still have to do a nice lap,” he said.
“I think it showed with where we were as a team that the car was quick, but still not easy to drive on a day like today. Still easy to make mistakes and could easily have not been on pole today. So at the same time, I still feel like I have to go out and perform well. I feel like I did exactly the same and I was on it just as much last weekend; things just didn’t turn out that way because of other circumstances.
“But I’ve not had it bother me too much. Like I said, Saturday night and coming into Sunday last week, I just concentrated on the next one and did what I had to do. I was performing very well in Baku — I was quick all weekend. So I felt like I could easily have fought for a podium and for the win, but it wasn’t to be. But I maximized that day and I’ll go out there tomorrow and try and do a similar thing.”
Carlos Sainz says he made a driving error in his crash at the start of Q3 at the Singapore Grand Prix, as he went off starting a timed lap. Oscar Piastri was completing a lap and had just been allowed through by Sainz ahead of the final corner, …
Carlos Sainz says he made a driving error in his crash at the start of Q3 at the Singapore Grand Prix, as he went off starting a timed lap.
Oscar Piastri was completing a lap and had just been allowed through by Sainz ahead of the final corner, while Max Verstappen was close behind as the Spaniard accelerated to begin his opening effort. Sainz overcorrected a big slide in the middle of the corner and spun backwards into the barrier at high speed, and he admits he pushed too hard given the lack of tire temperature he had.
“I had a bit of a strange accident there,” Sainz said. “I had to let a lot of cars through there opening my lap and my tires were just a lot colder than I thought they would be. I misjudged the grip going on the bump in Turn 17 and it completely snapped on me.
“Driving mistake. I underestimated the grip I would get launching the lap. I was already under pressure with another car coming and I knew that launching the lap, I was already going to be slower because of the approach in the last corner. So slow, so it meant that I tried to do something that was not enough grip to do.”
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Sainz won for Ferrari at Singapore in 2023 but this season has had a more challenging weekend, and says he hasn’t had the confidence he needed to be fighting for pole position.
“Yep, it’s been a big struggle for me this weekend. Very strange how it can change from one year to another,” he admitted. “But like we’ve seen many times this year, to get the tires in the right window over one lap with our car is quite tricky. I had a couple of decent laps over the weekend, but in general very inconsistent.
“I had issues with the brakes yesterday, which didn’t help my build-up to the weekend. Here it’s all about gaining confidence, executing from FP1 to Q3, perfect laps and I didn’t have that this weekend. I was just struggling yesterday, didn’t get into a rhythm and today to get the tires and the brakes into a window was just a very tricky thing to do.”
Sainz admitted he might have to start Sunday’s race from the pit lane due to the amount of damage sustained in the crash, if the team has to change specification of any components.
“Honestly, the car looks quite damaged. I don’t know what we will do,” he said. “I just hope that I can have a normal race tomorrow, get into a rhythm like I could in Baku, and then we can show good pace.
“I think this year, once I get into a rhythm in the race, we should be OK. It’s just over one lap with the black magic of the tires to get everything working. I mean, you saw the mistake I did. It’s not common and not typical, and it shows that there must be something, honestly, with a very, very fine line between them to grip and not to grip. So tomorrow, as soon as I get into a rhythm, we will be there.”
Max Verstappen refused to give full answers during the FIA press conference following qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix in protest of the penalty he received for swearing earlier in the week. The FIA has been trying to clamp down on drivers …
Max Verstappen refused to give full answers during the FIA press conference following qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix in protest of the penalty he received for swearing earlier in the week.
The FIA has been trying to clamp down on drivers swearing on team radio, with Formula One Management (FOM) — who control what airs from team radio in races — often broadcasting emotionally-charged messages. In Thursday’s official press conference, Verstappen swore when describing how bad his car was in the previous race, and was later given an obligation “to accomplish some work of public interest” because his language amounted to misconduct as defined by the International Sporting Code.
Fresh from qualifying second on Saturday night, Verstappen then offered extremely short responses to the questions from the FIA moderator in the top three press conference, and when asked if he could elaborate at one stage he said, “No, I might get fined or get an extra day, so…”
Verstappen did make clear to the moderator that his protest was not aimed at him, and then when asked by a member of the press room about his qualifying performance he replied, “I would prefer if you ask these questions outside the room.”
True to his word, the Dutchman then carried out his own impromptu briefing after walking out of the official press conference room, and explained the reasoning for his approach.
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“I find it … ridiculous, what happened,” Verstappen said. “Why should I then give full answers? Because it is very easy, apparently, that you get a fine or some sort of penalty. I prefer not to speak a lot, save my voice, and of course we can do the interviews somewhere else.”
Verstappen believes the FIA wanted to set a precedent with him when it came to him saying his car was “f***ed” on Thursday, but insisted that his frustration was not with the stewards either.
“People got warnings or a little fine, and now with me they want to set an even bigger example, I guess, which for me is a bit weird because I didn’t swear at anyone particularly — I just said one thing about my car and they [reacted].
“It’s in the code, you know? They have to follow the book and it’s not the stewards; I don’t want to blame this on the stewards because I actually had a really good chat with them, and they need to follow the code, the book. I think they are quite understanding, but it’s difficult for them as well.”
An FIA spokesperson confirmed Verstappen would face no action for his approach to the press conference on Saturday, as he had fulfilled his obligations by attending and providing answers, regardless of length.
Verstappen also received support from both Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton, who had qualified on pole position and third respectively.
“He deserved it!” Norris joked. “Foul language, so… I think it’s pretty unfair. I don’t agree with any of it.”
Hamilton added: “I think it’s a bit of a joke, to be honest. This is the pinnacle of the sport. Mistakes are made. I certainly won’t be doing [community service], and I hope Max doesn’t do it.”
