Verstappen managed to hold onto the place, but only by taking to the exit road and emerging ahead of Russell. In order to avoid a penalty for gaining an advantage off track, his race engineer recommended that he allow the Mercedes driver to pass by.
Despite some fiery complaints over the radio, he appeared to back off at Turn 5 and invite Russell to take the outside line, but quickly returned to his usual speed and collided with him on the penultimate lap.
Offering his take on the incident, Russell said afterwards: “My perspective is that I just got crashed into! I don’t really know why or what the thinking was behind it. In the end, I’m glad that I continued with little damage and ultimately it punished him a lot more than me.
“That’s how Max goes racing. As I said, he was in P4, I was in P5 – I ended up P4, he ended up P10, so from my side I’m glad that I managed to finish the race.
“Not really sure what he was thinking because he cost himself and his team a lot of points, so no conversation [is] really required.”
