Verstappen Overtake Saga and Aftermath: Reactions

The Verstappen overtake incident was a rather funny affair. Max Verstappen, Jos Verstappen, Christian Horner, any one working at Red Bull racing, F1 legend Niki Lauda and a few million fans and self proclaimed ‘connoisseurs’ of Formula 1 didn’t find it amusing. But trust me, it is funny!

Let me set the scene for you. 2017 US Grand Prix. Last lap. Verstappen in P4 looking to get ahead of Kimi in P3. The youngest race winner in the sport tried to give it as much as he could. And on turn 17, Max made it past the Finn. Verstappen finished P3. But the celebrations in RedBull garage were short lived. Stewards soon announced that five seconds are to be added to Verstappen’s time, robbing him off a podium finish.

The ruling sparked a new thread of controversy, discussion and comments. Here is what everyone said.

Max is clearly disappointed. He went ahead to say that it was a superb race but ‘stupid’ decisions like these really ‘kill the sport’.

“It’s one idiot steward up there which always makes decisions against me. At the end of the day everybody is running wide everywhere, there are no track limits. At Turn 9 you can run wide, at Turn 19 you can go off the track and nobody will say anything.”

With many drivers extending track limits, Max does have a valid point which can not be neglected.

Letting a rival driver past yourself is always a setback. And it was no different for Kimi Raikkonen. In fact he did not even know why Max got a penalty when he took the podium.

“I have no idea what happened with Verstappen or why he got the penalty,” said Raikkonen. “I had no idea what happened to him apart from he got past me at the second-last corner.

“Obviously I was disappointed just after the race when I thought I had finished fourth but there was some issue with Max. I got to go on the podium but didn’t see it, I don’t know where he went,” he told Motorsports.com.

“I saw in my mirror and I was a bit surprised, at that speed – I was a bit pissed off he got past me.”

Red Bull boss Christian Horner brought back memories from Mexican GP 2016. Max was penalized after the race for dangerous driving because of which he lost the podium to Daniel Ricciardo. He claims that Verstappen should have right to appeal against this ‘hasty’ decision, as promised at the start of the season.

“They said they wouldn’t make that hasty decision again,” Horner explained to Sky F1. “They said that they’d listen, they’d look at all the facts, they’d listen to the drivers and then make a decision. What’s happened? They’ve made an instant decision and I think it’s a shocking decision. They didn’t even listen to Max’s argument. In other instances, they would have had the drivers in and listened to both sides. Maybe they would have come to the same conclusion, but at least give them the right of reply.”

He also supported Verstappen’s claim of other cars going off track limits

“There’s been cars going off track all day today and no action at all, so I think it would be unbelievably harsh to give Max a penalty,” Horner told Sky Sports. “It’s wrong. We’ll have a look at it, but for me it was fair, hard racing. I think that’s a bad judgement by the stewards to have made that call. He did it the hard way. We’ve seen cars off track all day today, all weekend, so to penalise him at this stage, that’s not right.”

Ahh the fatherly love. His tweets say it all. FIA’s full form definitely deserves some chuckles.

Three time world champion was definitely having a fit of rage of his own.

“This decision is the worst I’ve ever seen, he did nothing wrong,” said Lauda.

“We’re racing drivers, we’re not on a normal road, it’s ridiculous to destroy the sport with this kind of decision. There was nothing to interfere with, it was a normal overtaking. Why cannot you drive over white lines if it is possible? Build a wall there if you want. As long as there is normal circuit, you can use it. A white line is not a limit. We agreed this all, last year it was all agreed. And now we get this decision. I think it’s completely wrong.”

So clearly street tracks are the solution to end these conflicts. Interesting.

We have here, Ladies and gentlemen, a famous person who does go against Max Verstappen’s style of driving. Though Lewis pretty much agrees it was a wrong overtake, he keeps a very different view on how to tackle it.

“He’s off-track,” the championship leader told Sky F1. “This is the problem with today’s circuits. I don’t know who made the decision but there’s all these run-off areas. Why is that not grass? If that was grass he wouldn’t have gone there. I just don’t know why there’s these flaws on these circuits. Particularly the new generation of driver comes in and is very happy to exploit these things. Clearly he’s way off the line. You can’t go there.”

Hamilton went on to express his love for the older tracks, as he always have.

He told Martin Brundle and Damon Hill: “I loved it in your guys’ day when there was grass. You should pay some sort of price where you have to come off the gas and you take a bit of a bumpy ride, whether it’s onto stones or whatever. You don’t have that now.”

Does have a point to be fair

Looks legit to me

Yes. Thank you for saying this

Umm. Okay…

That’s the Spirit!