Red Bull driver Max Verstappen says Lewis Hamilton can only blame himself for not winning the Brazilian Grand Prix because he crashed into him again.
The protagonists for winning the title in the 2021 season found themselves again in a wheel-to-wheel fight at Interlagos, in which there was again an incident between two drivers.
Trying to get into second place and threaten Hamilton, Verstappen tried to pass the Briton on the outside of Turn 1 which led to contact as both drivers refused to give space at Turn 2.
There was contact in which Leiws Hamilton dropped to seventh position, and Max Verstappen pulled out a significantly thicker end because he had to pit to replace the front wing.
The incident was immediately noted by the referees, who made it clear that the Red Bull driver was to blame for the collision, so they awarded him a five-second penalty.
However, the Dutchman was not satisfied with this decision because he said that the Briton was to blame for the incident because he didn’t want to leave him space, so he didn’t want to back down either so that there would be another collision between them.
“I went off the outside of Turn 1 and I felt it as soon as I passed him, he wasn’t going to leave me room,” said Verstappen.
“I said, ‘OK, if you don’t leave me space, then we will simply collide,'” he pointed out.
“In the end, we were too slow anyway, and that ruined his chance to win the race. Of course, with the safety car he still had a chance.”
“I thought that after last year we might forget about it, that we can finally race. First of all, when I was going side by side, I thought: OK, let’s have a good race here,” he explains.
“With the driver, you feel whether he will leave you room or not. There was no intention to leave me any space,” he assures.
The Dutchman states that he had no intention of having another incident with Hamilton because he actually wanted to race, but when he saw that there was nothing to do with it, he went for a crash.
“I was 85 percent with him and my intention was not to crash, but I could feel that he wasn’t going to leave me room in that corner, and then we crashed,” he added.
“If he had moved just a little bit, he probably would have stayed ahead. It’s a shame, I want to race, I want to have a good fight.”
“But when the other person doesn’t want to work with you and then the rules are honestly so confusing about how far you have to be next to what they judge it to be next to, then you get things like this.”
“I accept the five-second penalty, I want to race and I thought we were racing,” concluded Max Verstappen.
