Potential Penalty for Max Verstappen Could have Doomed Red Bull’s Future

The Red Bull team dodged a bullet when the stewards cleared Max Verstappen of any wrongdoing during his clash with Charles LeClerc. However, Red Bull motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko confessed that the team would have reconsidered their F1 future if a penalty was imposed.

Dutch sensation, Max Verstappen pulled off one of the great performances of recent years. From the second row of the grid to fall down to 8th and then claw his way to victory, was nothing short of epic. However, owing to his late-race shenanigans, a 3-hour wait was warranted to confirm victory.

Luckily, Max Verstappen got away scot free as the clash was declared a racing incident. Thought-provokingly, Marko admitted that the wait came with some forward-looking thoughts between himself and Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz.

Speaking to Motorsport-Total.com, he said: “If the victory had been taken from us, that would certainly have had an impact.

“We were not speaking concretely about what we would do. But we said: ‘So Formula 1 is not interesting.’

“There you can use the words of Max, when he said: ‘We may as well stay at home.'”

The Max Verstappen incident with Leclerc is the latest example of the stewards having significant influence over the races. This comes in the wake of Sebastian Vettel having his win stripped off him in Canada. Similarly, Daniel Ricciardo lost points in France, after a similar wait to Verstappen.

“The stewards are in a corset, and if a case is passed on to them, they are bound by the rules and may then have to punish,” Marko added. “Of course I would have been upset too, but I always said there have to be different rules: first of all, not so many things should come to the stewards, and secondly they should not be forced to pronounce a punishment at once and have much more leeway in their decisions.”