Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Silverstone, 2021

Hamilton “waving a flag like nothing happened” shows what Mercedes are really like – Verstappen

2021 Hungarian Grand Prix

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Max Verstappen said he spoke to Lewis Hamilton following their collision in the British Grand Prix but remains unhappy about the Mercedes driver’s “really disrespectful” victory celebrations at Silverstone.

Hamilton was given a 10-second penalty for the collision between the pair, which put Verstappen out of the race, which the Mercedes driver went on to win.

Verstappen said he is fully recovered from his 51G impact with the barrier, following which he was taken to hospital for precautionary checks. “Of course the first few days after the race you feel quite sore but since then it’s just going better and better,” he said.

The Red Bull driver did not elaborate on the conversation with his championship rival, but explained why he felt Hamilton’s reaction to winning the race had been “disrespectful”.

“One guy is in hospital, the other guy is waving the flag around like nothing has happened while you pushed the guy into the wall with 51Gs. And not only that, just the whole reaction of the team besides that.

“That’s not how you celebrate a win, especially a win how they got it. That’s what I found really disrespectful. In a way it shows how they really are. It comes out after a pressure situation. I wouldn’t want to be seen like that.”

Following the race Red Bull team principal Christian Horner accused Hamilton of “dirty driving”, a description Verstappen distanced himself from. “That’s the first time I heard it like that,” said Hamilton. “No, I think he just misjudged the moment in that corner.”

However Verstappen is adamant the stewards gave his rival a lenient penalty for the collision.

“I don’t think the penalty was correct because basically you take out your main rival and especially with the speed we have in our cars we are miles ahead of, let’s say, the third-best team. We are easily 40, 50 seconds ahead in normal conditions. So a 10 second penalty doesn’t do anything, so definitely that penalty should have been more severe.”

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2021 Hungarian Grand Prix

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64 comments on “Hamilton “waving a flag like nothing happened” shows what Mercedes are really like – Verstappen”

  1. No mention of Toto saying he got the all clear from both RB and FIA before celebrations took place? No questions asked?

    1. Toto is the one who should ask questions. He “failed” to inform Lewis. It was known max was on his way to the hospital. Follow the time line.

      1. Great, so when did Toto get the no injuries and fine message from Senior figure at RB and FIA. Given you know the time line of events. And I followed your timeline early, and it was clear you were just making stuff up as you went along. So evidence please.

        1. Nothing new for Erik.

        2. He never got one, why would he? Toto just assumed that Max was ok because it was ‘only’ a precautionary check.

      2. He “failed” to inform Lewis. It was known max was on his way to the hospital for precautionary checks.

        Fixed that for you. The way folks keep banging on about Verstappen’s hospital visit, you’d think he was on life support with a priest at his side. He was apparently well enough to send angry Tweets while in hospital.

        He had a brain scan and doctors reported that they found nothing. ;-)

        1. @scbriml

          He had a brain scan and doctors reported that they found nothing. ;-)

          That doesn’t mean the accident wasn’t huge. 51G that’s basically an airplane crash !

          1. I think you missed the joke.

          2. wooosh

    2. Max doing all his talking at the race track venue

    3. Just to clarify, Toto was given the all-clear that Verstappen was ok and uninjured, not the all-clear to celebrate how they did.

      Perhaps it’s just me, but it seemed more like you were trying to say that Toto was given the all-clear for those celebrations and making it seem like Red Bull and Verstappen were just causing media trouble again like they are doing with this whole situation. Also, the main problem isn’t that but rather Hamilton’s, who admitted he wasn’t aware Max was ok at the time, celebrations and how in the media instead of checking if everything was ok and saying he hoped he was ok, etc (paying some basic courtesy like a lot of other drivers were) but rather was blaming Max for the incident and defending himself. He didn’t need to do that immediately, all he should’ve done is say he hoped Max was ok and that it was an unfortunate incident, etc. He handled it extremely poorly (irrespective of the actual crash which was just a racing incident) which is more the issue. Everyone just needs to move on and accept it was a racing incident and that after the race Hamilton wasn’t that sporting. Nothing personal against him either, you can’t be perfect all the time.

  2. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    29th July 2021, 15:04

    I’m not particularly a Lewis or Max fan but this is getting pathetic, one; it was a precautionary check over, and two; Lewis was informed Max was okay when he asked after the incident, showing concern.

    This political lobbying is so transparent. They ain’t changing the penalty, an unfortunate racing incident, two stags rutting. Lewis predominately to blame but Max should have had more self preservation in his position, especially on the outside where you will always come off worse in an incident.

    1. Pathetic! Lewis should have been put in the back of a police van and shipped out to a corrections facility!!

      Hamilton KILLED Max Verstappen!!

      wait… that’s not what happened? not the least bit?, carry on then.

    2. I can assure you that precautionary checks are there for a reason: to make sure that a person is alright in a situation that might make this diagnosis uncertain otherwise.

      For example: when a 40yo falls and bumps his/her head a CT scan will be made as a precautionary check although that person might feel alright anyway.

      So implying that it was ‘only’ precautionary you fail the see the exact reason why they do it.

      1. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
        29th July 2021, 23:23

        What on earth are you on about? I know what the word precautionary means

        1. one; it was a precautionary check over

          Maybe I didn’t understand you correctly, so if I didn’t my apologies. I seemed to me you downplayed or didn’t understand the significance of precautionary checks. If you do then I understand you mentioned the above quote in your post.

          1. * I don’t understand why you mentioned the above quote

          2. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
            30th July 2021, 9:03

            My apologies @mcbosch I wasn’t meaning they aren’t important, just that he wasn’t exactly in hospital dying the way they keep selling the story and lobbying for emotional blackmail.

  3. So Lewis and Mercedes were supposed to have a detailed medical report from the hospital during the race, so that they could appropriately gauge their immediate post race celebrations?

    I mean they were told Max got out of the car, and was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure. So they thought he was fine, not in danger of dying, and uninjured enough to get out of the car on his own.

    If it were a serious injury, or Max hadn’t gotten out on his own, I’m sure they would have reacted differently.

    I really want this story to go away.

    1. Agreed. It got old the day after.

      1. Joe Pineapples
        29th July 2021, 18:50

        Same day

  4. Max is making a mistake choosing to die on this hill. Some people have called him mature but I don’t see that at all. His attitude has barely changed. It’s clear he doesn’t tolerate people that get in his way in one way or the other.
    It’s not a good look to call disrespectful a 7-time world champion that everyone on the paddock respects.

    1. Zach (@zakspeedf1team)
      29th July 2021, 16:00

      Yeah, he seems to to the “let me pass or we bot crash” BS move, and then whining about lack of respect when it backfires.

  5. If this is the harshest Max is going to speak of the incident and of LH and Mercedes then I think he is being very mature and diplomatic. He of all people is entitled to his opinion and is being reasonable and balanced considering he is the one most affected.

    1. He is, grown a lot and passed Lewis in all terrains.

      1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
        29th July 2021, 15:58

        well, in all terrains except racing – otherwise, he would made that corner and won the race. But he’s still early in his career and only has 129 races under his belt.

        At this pace, he’ll have to hit the 300-400 race mark, before he races at F1 levels.

        1. He made that corner, Lewis was unable to and took max out.
          Reversing the truth only works for blinded LH Fans.

      2. Except… 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 WDCs
        99 wins, 100 PPs etc etc
        Lewis has won more races at 2 venues than Max has his whole career. So not quite “passed Lewis in all terrains”
        You crack on though.

        1. Hamilton is declining, not sure you noticed, maybe next year will be a wake up call for you, if 4 cars are more even.

          1. lol

            that is why he is still whipping bottas.

            i mean, the way hamilton took the lines to attack max in both the british sprint quali and race is not something I have seen any other driver being able to do till date. Just continuous pressure.

            But sure, keep wearing the fan blinding drapes and commenting ruckus.

    2. SheriffBufordTJustice
      29th July 2021, 15:41

      Well Robbie, we saw you taking that particular stance from a mile away. How about quiet composure or a dignified silence? RBR don’t have those qualities. Fact of the matter is that LH asked on team radio if Max was ok immediately following the incident. You heard what he was told. He earned the win. Case closed. But nah, RBR have to get all salty over it. At this point, they’re embarrassing themselves.

    3. So much for all of the “I’ll do my talking on the track” then.

      1. He still does. But his polite answer rages LH Fans I see.
        A long and depressing season ahead for you.

        1. The season has been great. Whats your problem?

    4. Yes, a younger Max would have given Lewis a shove in the paddock afterwards :)

  6. Cringe.

  7. Zach (@zakspeedf1team)
    29th July 2021, 15:58

    This is a great example of Max “not wanting to get involved” in this row lol.

    1. He is being asked the questions. The polite way is to respond with what you think. It is not himself that is triggering the response vocally. He can’t do a Kimi and just ignore the questions, that is impolite. Sometimes I wish that some of the journalists omit from questions that trigger the drivers, or the unnecessary questions.

      1. Well saying he’s not going to get involved and then getting involved the day after is a massive contradiction. A simple “I’d prefer to move on and not comment on that” would have done. But I wouldn’t expect anything less from a RedBull employee.

  8. Hamilton has over a decade of, by the rest of the paddocks standards, pretty clean racing. It clearly wasn’t a deliberate calculated move which both Max and RB seem to be insinuating / putting into question somewhat. The whole world heard Hamilton’s asking and being effectively told he was fine. Would Max have behaved differently at his home circuit under the same circumstances. Absolutely not IMO.

    Personally, I feel Hamilton got frustrated with Max carving up people and his general aggressive driving (for which many like him as it’s certainly exciting). He dug his feet in where he shouldn’t but it’s still what I’d call a racing incident. Horner’s reaction to a similar incident says it all. It was 70/30 Ham/Ver IMO.

    Can this please go away now as nothing will change the FIA verdict despite RB protests.

    1. Yeah a clean decade. But before that..

      https://www.racefans.net/2011/11/03/lewis-hamilton-35-incidents-fia-stewards-fair/

      Google Lewis Hamilton 2011. He was such a Crashtappen back then. Even Lauda said he would kill someone.

      Max and Lewis are so similar.

    2. I am not sure how you see the driving standards of Hamilton in these cases:

      Pushing Rosberg off:
      https://www.racefans.net/2015/10/25/rosberg-fumes-over-hamiltons-extremely-aggressive-turn-one-move/

      Pushing Rosberg off:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw0KwbgV2cg

      Pushing Rosberg off:
      2015 Japanese Grand Prix reviewPosted on
      27th September 2015, 18:47 | Written by Keith Collantine

      Did Nico Rosberg have a flashback to Spa last year?

      As he and Lewis Hamilton rounded the opening corner side-by-side and Rosberg found himself edged closer and closer to the run-off area, it must have crossed his mind that he could chance staying alongside Hamilton and risk the contact, just as happened in the Belgian Grand Prix.

      But he thought better of it, took a trip across the run-off area, and was passed by Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas. In that moment, the pole sitter lost his chance to win the Japanese Grand Prix and with it the possibility of closing down Hamilton’s championship lead.

  9. This really is quite feeble from RB. Max went to the hospital for a check-up, as protocol demands, and was promptly given a clean bill of health.

    Making a meal of it at the time was a bit dubious, but continuing to do so 10 days later when self-evidently (and thankfully) Max came to no harm is questionable in the extreme.

    1. @mrfabulous, I concur. Redundant this many days afterwards.

  10. Just get over his celebration.
    HAM didn’t deserve any penalty in the first place, so 10 sec during a pit stop was more than enough, even if he still managed to catch and overtake LEC.

    1. Then expect a crash every race cause it’s very very worth it to take out your opponent if you can orchestrate a racing incident!

  11. “That’s not how you celebrate a win, especially a win how they got it. That’s what I found really disrespectful. In a way it shows how they really are. It comes out after a pressure situation. I wouldn’t want to be seen like that.”

    Despite what everybody seems to focus on, I believe this is more key than Max’s medical situation and if/when Lewis was informed about it. After all it’s rather silly to celebrate a win like you’ve won the championship, while you were predominantly to blame for your main rival (who had been faster pretty much all weekend)’s race-ending crash. Of course you can be happy with a win. Definitely if you take into account how you got away very lucky in this race and how you lost 5 races in a row before. But the celebrations made it seem as if Lewis and Mercedes got this win on merit and that, in my opinion, is and won a bit of a stretch.

    1. It must have been painful for Max to watch, sure. But that happens. Lewis has said he didn’t know he was in hospital. He’d been told Max was fine (when Lewis asked during the red flag). At the same time, Hamilton always fights head and celebrates hard at Silverstone. The crowd were respectful of Max, applauding when he got out of the car. But it was the first big crowd following the pandemic, emotions were high, Lewis drove well on track after the incident and took the win dramatically towards the end. It may be hard for Max and Red Bull to accept, but it wasn’t about rubbing their faces in it or showing disrespect.

    2. This is how drivers react when they win at a home race.

      1. Verstappen and Hamilton both have their home race in Monaco.

        1. @cashnotclass Of course, that is why we hear the Monegasque national anthem so often on a Sunday afternoon after a race.

  12. Verstappen isn’t wrong when he notes that Mercedes and Hamilton are feeling the pressure. This isn’t anything new; in 2018 we had multiple collisions between Mercedes and Ferrari, and they stooped to the infamous ‘intentional or incompetent’ line of attack against Räikkönen of all people. This also follows Mercedes complaining to the FIA about some alleged cheating by Red Bull every other weekend to distract from their mistakes in the 2021 season.

  13. Max might be a bit embarrassed by some of these comments down the line. They come across as force-fed by Christian/Helmut and with the whole review thing a reminder that the gloves are well and truly off in the biggest clash of the ’21 season between Christian and Toto.

  14. How pathetic. Max, Christian, Helmut et al. Truly pathetic bunch, really. They have no problem dragging other teams, drivers and the whole of F1 into the mud like this. An embarrassment.

  15. Googled Bahrain 2020 podium and there is video of Lewis and Max spraying champagne with grosjean in the hospital. Max, please just shut the up.

    1. Came here to say exactly this!

    1. @f1osaurus While reserve drivers Albon and Perez (sorry, couldn’t resist) spend the week totally involved in fabricating the Red Bull war dossier. I started the week thinking they were being cleverly cynical in keeping this issue going, trying to upset Hamilton, but they now seem over-invested in this and starting to look ridiculous to anyone outside the team.

      1. F1oSaurus (@)
        30th July 2021, 7:10

        @david-br Agreed, you’d think it was just the usual propaganda routine aimed at drumming up sympathy and destabilizing their opponents.

        Especially when you see Horner explain how Verstappen wasn’t to blame at all when he was on the other side of the same scenario in Portimao against Stroll, he must understand that also Hamilton could never be held fully to blame for the Copse incident. Or in fact that it could just as easily have been deemed a racing incident just like Portimao as pretty much all of the F1 drivers class this incident.

        They never seem to understand that taking risk can have adverse effects.

        Like they had so many unsafe releases when working on ever faster pitstops, losing wheels in the process and then complain that they would get penalties for those incidents. They just didn’t grasp that not finishing a race was actually a much harsher penalty already. Although that was their #2 driver suffering, so who cares.

        Or running at tyre pressures below the minimum. Of course it made them faster around Baku, but racing below minimum running pressure clearly introduces a risk. They could have killed their driver with that. They only ever see the small direct benefit of whatever they do while overlooking the much greater potential adverse effects

        The same with aggressive defending and overtaking. Of course Horner will be all giddy when it works and the opponent is bullied out of the way. Like in Barcelona, but it will go wrong at some point. They actually should have learned from Baku 2018, but then they could convince themselves that it was caused by their #2 driver, so.

        Either way, looks like they still haven’t learned and actually believe the nonsense they preach.

        That’s the difference with Hamilton too. Hamilton usually does understand when to take risk and when not. People can call that luck, but it’s extremely effective. It gives him all those poles, wins and titles. He’s shown that he can be just as aggressive (even though he again tried to chicken out in Copse), but only if he deems it necessary.

        1. The same with aggressive defending and overtaking. Of course Horner will be all giddy when it works and the opponent is bullied out of the way. Like in Barcelona, but it will go wrong at some point.

          Perfectly described @f1osaurus It’s the switch between giddy adulation (of Max) and that casual badmouthing of opponents who do exactly the same that really grates. Bias is one thing, expected, but a complete inability to see from a rival’s perspective, only ever from your own, is deeply unappealing.

  16. This heat isn’t dead?!

  17. Let it go Max. Not doing any favours for yourself. If Red Bull and Max were true races they would admit it was a racing incident and move on

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