Max Verstappen explains “confusion” with George Russell under safety car at Canadian GP

Max Verstappen spoke about the incident with George Russell while both drivers were following the safety car during the Canadian Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Read also: Red Bull fails in its attempt to overturn Russell’s victory

An incident at the end of the race

The race ended under the Safety Car regime following Lando Norris’s retirement after a collision with his teammate Oscar Piastri.

During this neutralization, Max Verstappen briefly overtook George Russell, who was leading the race. On the radio, the Dutchman explained: « George suddenly braked very aggressively. »

George Russell, for his part, immediately reported to his engineer: Verstappen just overtook me under the safety car. Asked after the race, Max Verstappen admitted that some confusion arose due to the excessively low speed of the safety car.

« I think we were both trying to tell the safety car to speed up, because it was only going 120 km/h, » he explained to Sky Sports.

« Maybe she was doing that to try to give time to restart the race. George tried to get closer, I did the same, then he changed his mind, which caused a bit of confusion. »

A solid podium but Red Bull still behind

Max Verstappen finally finished second, marking a return to the podium after a difficult weekend in Barcelona.

He admitted that Red Bull still lacked the pace to contend for victory, despite having a solid car.

« It’s hard to say. I think overall, the team did a good job this weekend. We didn’t really make any mistakes. The car was solid. But in the race, we didn’t really have the pace. Once again, a bit too much tire degradation in the first stints. We ran a rather defensive race. »

« We had to be very aggressive with the stops. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could make it to the end with the last set of tires. Fortunately, with less fuel, it seemed a bit more manageable, so that’s positive », he explains.

Max Verstappen on his championship chances

With this result, Max Verstappen regained points on the two McLarens, and is now 43 points behind the championship leader, Oscar Piastri.

He believes, however, that Red Bull will need to raise their game to hope to clinch a fifth consecutive title: « We need more pace. Today, we stayed ahead only thanks to the qualifying. »

« The fact of going ahead, and the team that made the right strategic choices… But we can’t always rely on that. We need pure pace every weekend if we want to stay ahead.

I also think that McLaren were a bit less performant than usual. Normally, they are much faster.

« We take everything positive, but we still have a lot of work to truly contend for the title », he concluded.