Max Verstappen refuses to admit whether his crash with George Russell at the 2025 Spanish GP was deliberate or not, as the four-time world champion dodges the question at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Drama ensued when a late safety car came out for Kimi Antonelli’s DNF on Sunday, June 1 and when McLaren’s Oscar Piastri got the race back underway on Lap 61, chaos quickly began in Montemelo.
The Dutchman, who had pitted for hard tyres, almost dropped it out of the final corner and was overtaken by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc into Turn 1, whilst the 27-year-old Russell also tried to follow through but ended up bumping wheels with the defending champion.
The father-of-one headed off the track but kept the place ahead of the Silver Arrows’ driver, only to be told by his race engineer to let him through so as to avoid a time penalty with the field so close together.
And the 65-time Grand Prix winner seemed ready to oblige his superior and slowed to let Russell through, but then lunged into the corner and almost hit the British driver, who was left baffled.
Audiences immediately questioned the intentions and the 2016 Formula 1 world champion, Nico Rosberg, insisted it was on purpose and claimed he should have been disqualified for the incident but he “got away” with just a 10-second time penalty.
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As a result, fans were keen to know the thought process of Verstappen but he dodges the question when asked whether the crash at the 2025 Spanish GP was deliberate or not.
“Does it matter,” Verstappen retorted to Sky Sports F1 when asked about his intent. “Yeah, okay… That’s great…
“I prefer to speak about the race rather than one single moment.”
Verstappen says he’s out of title question after 2025 Spanish GP
Red Bull lacked the pace to outright fight McLaren on the same strategy, but a combination of opportunism on Lap 1 from their talented driver and the shrewd decisions of the pit wall put him back in play.
Verstappen found himself hounding down Lando Norris before the safety car was deployed by race control, whilst Piastri was a few seconds up the road – although he was likely managing his tyres.
Ultimately, the fact that they had to rely on an ingenious and ambitious tactical approach to the race indicates Red Bull can’t fight for the title in the eyes of their driver, who is poised to have the #33 number return to his car in 2026.
“If there are any, I think we are way too slow to fight for the title,” Verstappen added. “That was clear again today.
“We tried to do a three-stop and that was quite good but we also needed it because we had quite a bit of degradation on the tyres.
“Unfortunately, the Safety Car came out at the end and we ran out of tyres to use and the hard tyre was not the right tyre.
“When you only have six laps to go, everyone can go flat out and you are severely grip limited on the hard.”
