Jos Verstappen has defended his son’s qualifying transgression on Saturday, for which the younger Verstappen was penalised.
Max Verstappen was given a three place grid penalty after Saturday’s qualifying session in Mexico, demoting him from pole position down to P4. This was after the Dutch driver set his fastest lap of qualifying by keeping the foot planted on the throttle through the last corner despite there being yellow flags and a crashed Mercedes on the outside of the corner.
Verstappen confirmed afterwards that he hadn’t lifted off for the corner, and said “Do we have to go there? To safety? I think we know what we are doing – otherwise we would not be driving an F1 car. It’s qualifying and, yeah, you go for it.”
Bottas’ crash had actually damaged the marshaling system controls units that meant Verstappen’s dashboard didn’t display the yellow flag situation, but he would still have been shown the actual yellow flags and have been able to see the crashed car in the corner.
His father Jos, former Formula 1 driver, said he could see his son’s point of view about not backing off. Speaking to his official website, Jos said: “Max said that he hadn’t seen the yellow flag but only Bottas’ car. He didn’t take his foot off the gas, and I actually can see his point. The drivers normally get informed by the team very quickly if an accident has happened and what you need or need not to do. That wasn’t the case now, so the question remains what do you do as a driver.”
“Apart from that, you have just done your best lap of the entire weekend and everybody wants to get pole. There was just one corner to go, so he kept his foot on the gas.”
Referring to Lewis Hamilton’s similar transgression, for which the World Champion was not penalised, Jos said: “However, he wasn’t the only one and that’s the single one thing that really bothered him.”
Hamilton was not penalised, as the yellow flags were not out yet for the crash as Lewis had been directly behind Bottas on track at the time.
Verstappen’s lower grid position meant he had to fight hard to regain position at the start of the race, and had an off on the first lap while racing Hamilton. He then suffered a puncture on Lap 5, when racing Bottas through the stadium section. Jos said Bottas was at fault for the contact and that, without it, his son may have been able to regain victory in the race: “In hindsight you could argue that Max could have waited with his move on Bottas, but on the other hand we knew that you could get into trouble with the tyres after ten laps, making it hard to be able to do something after that. In any case, he tried to make the best of it, but the puncture did him in.”
“Bottas made a mistake in the previous corner and Max had the momentum. Valtteri saw him coming and left the door open, but he turned back in too quickly, causing his front wing to clip Max’ rear tyre.”
“Had that not happened, Max would have had a shot at the victory.”
