took his ninth victory of the 2024 season on the on Sunday, although he wasn’t precisely in a celebratory temper after the race, accusing Mercedes’ George Russell of attempting to “screw him over.”
The Pink Bull driver took pole place on Saturday however was handed a uncommon one-place grid penalty after he was deemed to have pushed unnecessarily slowly and impeded Russell throughout qualifying. This meant that Russell was subsequently promoted to P1.
The stewards regarded this as a “difficult” case as each drivers have been on gradual laps, somewhat than pushing on qualifying laps.
Verstappen – who formally on the earlier GP in Las Vegas – overtook the Brit initially of the race and maintained his result in take victory. However the incident was clearly nonetheless on his thoughts after he had crossed the end line, telling the media that he had “misplaced all respect” for Russell.
“I feel that’s the primary time that in a gradual lap somebody has been penalized,” Verstappen . “Whereas, truly, I simply tried to be good, so possibly I shouldn’t be good.
“On the finish of the season, the whole lot is kind of determined, for me particularly, I didn’t wish to screw anybody over to organize their lap. And by doing that, you recognize, being good, mainly you get a penalty. And that’s what I attempted to elucidate as properly. However I simply felt like I used to be speaking to a brick wall.
“I used to be fairly shocked when sitting there within the Stewards’ room, what was all happening.Actually, very disappointing as a result of I feel we’re all right here, we respect one another rather a lot and, after all, I’ve been in that assembly room many instances in my life, in my profession with folks that I’ve raced and I’ve by no means seen somebody attempting to screw somebody over that arduous.”
After the qualifying incident, Russell mentioned that he was frightened about harm to his automobile, explaining how he “ended up going via the gravel everywhere in the flooring, so it felt like the ground was scraping over that curb and thru the gravel.”
He additionally informed Sky Sports activities after qualifying that Verstappen “was clearly going too gradual, I used to be following the rule and virtually had the crash.”
Russell finally completed the race in fourth, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri coming house behind Verstappen in second and third respectively in a chaotic race.
The Security Automotive made three appearances on Sunday, the primary of which got here on the opening lap when a collision between Nico Hülkenberg and Esteban Ocon prompted Ocon to hit Franco Colapinto, taking each drivers out of the race.
Later, a wing mirror was proven flying off Alex Albon’s Williams automobile, with the next particles inflicting punctures for Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Russell’s teammate, , and the Security Automotive was introduced out once more.
Verstappen’s former title rival Lando Norris tried to catch the Dutchman napping on the restart, however the reigning champion held him off. Norris was later tagged with a devastating 10-second stop-go penalty for failing to decelerate throughout a yellow flag interval, taking the British driver out of podium rivalry as he finally ending tenth.
Hamilton was additionally punished for 2 separate incidents, first serving a five-second time penalty for a false begin earlier than being hit with a drive-through penalty for dashing within the pitlane after struggling a puncture. The seven-time world champion was audibly dejected over the staff radio in what was his , even telling his engineers that he was going to retire the automobile himself.
After the second restart, the Security Automotive got here out for the third time with Hülkenberg having beached himself within the gravel entice.
All of the chaos let rating his and Sauber’s first factors of the season, crossing the road in P8.
F1 heads to Abu Dhabi for the ultimate race of the season this weekend.
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