During the Hungarian Grand Prix, there was a collision between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Turn 1.
Lewis Hamilton “turned in” on Max Verstappen when the Red Bull driver tried to overtake him up in the inside at Turn One at the Hungarian Grand Prix, says Helmut Marko.
Despite arriving at the Hungaroring armed with five updates for the RB20, Red Bull lacked the pace to challenge McLaren and that, coupled with a questionable strategy, had Verstappen seething.
A racing incident or Lewis Hamilton’s fault?
As the race entered its final laps, the Red Bull driver, who had been overtaken earlier by Hamilton due to a strategic pit stop, attempted to regain his position by making a daring move on the inside of Turn One. Unfortunately, he misjudged the maneuver and collided with the front right tyre of the Mercedes, causing his car to momentarily lift off the ground.
Verstappen, who was airborne and off the track, surrendered fourth place to Charles Leclerc. However, despite the setback, his RB20 remained operational, allowing the reigning World Champion to ultimately secure a fifth-place finish in the race.
After reviewing the incident, the stewards deemed it to be a “racing” collision and decided not to penalize either driver involved.
The ruling stated that Car 1 had clearly locked up its front wheels before any collision took place, deviating from the usual path for a regular overtaking maneuver at Turn One.
Car 44’s driver claimed it to be a racing incident, whereas Car 1’s driver contended it as changing direction while braking.
The Stewards do not view this as a regular instance of ‘changing direction under braking’. However, we believe that the driver of Car 44 could have taken additional measures to prevent the collision.
They clarified that there was no single driver who could be primarily held responsible, thus leading to the conclusion that no additional measures would be taken.
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‘Lewis Hamilton just turned in, everyone could see what happened then’
However, according to Marko, Hamilton should be held responsible as he simply “turned in” on the Red Bull driver.
Breaking down the race weekend in his Speedweek column, Marko said: “Then there was the last action, when Hamilton and Verstappen were lapping a Williams and Max spotted a gap, immediately jumped into the hole and then there was a collision.
“I had a conversation with Verstappen regarding the incident. Although the wheels of his car did lock when braking, he assured me that he would have successfully navigated the corner without any risk of losing control.”
Max had been leading the race, but Hamilton suddenly made a turn, revealing to everyone what had transpired.
Therefore, we secured the fifth position, though it is important to acknowledge that our speed was only slightly behind McLaren’s.
Red Bull had a challenging weekend, which culminated in a crash. Verstappen voiced his dissatisfaction with the team’s upgrades, strategy, and their decision to ask him to surrender second place to Lando Norris following their incident on the first lap.
Marko admitted that the entire weekend had been challenging. One instance was our disappointment in narrowly missing pole position with Max, falling short by a mere 46 thousandths of a second. Verstappen was particularly annoyed as he had anticipated the car’s improvements would grant us a two-tenths advantage over our competitors, but unfortunately, that did not materialize.
“Following that, the race commenced with an impressive maneuver from Max in the opening lap. He skillfully positioned himself on the left side, overtaking the McLaren from the outside. However, due to being pushed off, he graciously returned to second place, ensuring a cautious and secure position.”
Looking back, it cannot be guaranteed with 100 percent certainty that Verstappen would have been penalized with a five-second penalty in that situation. Therefore, it might have been wiser for him to maintain his position instead, considering the significant time lost when overtaking on this particular track.
“As events unfolded, emotions intensified as both the race engineer and Max made inappropriate comments, to put it mildly.”
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