After Sunday’s Bahrain GP, Lewis Hamilton labelled Max Verstappen a “d******d” after he attempted a move early on that led to the pair touching wheels.
Verstappen came off worse on this occasion, suffering a puncture. He managed to nurse his Red Bull to the pits for a tyre change, but a short while later, his car failed and he was forced to retire.
Hamilton called Verstappen the expletive shortly after the race, but Max shrugged it off when shown the video by Dutch TV. He said:
He is just out of the car there. Then those things can happen. If you are just out of the car, you are still full of adrenaline, so yeah.
The Dutchman also refused to admit that he was being impatient when making the overtake.
I was really close behind and there was a chance to overtake, so I thought it was a good opportunity. Our car was great. Then I’m not going to stay behind him. I knew we had a very good car for the race, so I knew we would be able to fight them.
Both Max and his teammate Daniel Ricciardo will be hopeful of better luck with reliability for the remainder of the season, as the Renault issues of last season don’t yet seem to be fully solved.
