I’m Just Doing My Race: Max Verstappen

In an interview prior to the press conference, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen spoke about the incident with Esteban Ocon. The interviewer, Will Buxton tweeted his interpretation of Verstappen’s comments.

However, Verstappen later clarified his comments in that interview. He stated that he never suggested that Ocon collided with him intentionally. Just for the sake of clarification, here is the interview with Buxton.

Verstappen confessed that he never expected to race a backmarker, and he certainly did not expect Ocon to take him out. He said that he would not have changed anything, but Ocon definitely should have changed something. He also said that if Lewis Hamilton was leading then Ocon would not risk taking him out.

Buxton asked Max if he thought that Ocon deliberately took him out of the race. Max Verstappen replied, “Listen, I mean, I just overtook Lewis. You are in the lead of the race, it’s all about tyre management this year so I back out. I backed out of it because we had a lot of pace in our car. For me it was just cruising to the victory, and then somebody comes out of the pitlane on new tyres but he is generally a second and a half slower than me.”

“Then for 2 laps, you are pushing flat out and then I’m cruising with used tyres and you can keep up especially in the DRS, we’re three-tenths faster. But he knows that as soon as he gets past, within 2 laps his tyres are off and he’ll have to let me by again. So in the end, the whole process of trying to get by, using your tyres more than you should have done and letting me by again, it’s just compromising his race as well. So that’s the part I don’t understand.”