{"id":334182,"date":"2025-12-08T04:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T04:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/334182\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T04:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T04:33:08","slug":"verstappen-refuses-to-blame-russell-clash-for-costing-him-5th-f1-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/334182\/","title":{"rendered":"Verstappen refuses to blame Russell clash for costing him 5th F1 title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen<\/a> refused to blame his road-rage with George Russell<\/a> at this season’s Spanish Grand Prix for costing him a fifth consecutive world championship.<\/p>\n

Verstappen was sanctioned by the stewards for deliberately driving into Mercedes’ Russell in Barcelona in June. He was demoted from fifth to 10th, costing him nine points.<\/p>\n

Verstappen won the season-finale<\/a> in Abu Dhabi — ending the year with more victories (eight) than any other driver — and finished just two points behind Lando Norris<\/a> as the British driver secured his maiden world crown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But asked if he regretted his driving in Spain — which he subsequently accepted blame for — Verstappen snapped back: “You forget about all the other stuff that happened in my season.<\/p>\n

“The only thing that you mention is Barcelona. I knew that would come. And you are giving me a stupid grin now.<\/p>\n

“It is part of racing. You live and learn. A championship is won over 24 rounds and I have also had a lot of early Christmas presents given to me in the second half of the season so you can also question that, too.”<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen finished two points behind Lando Norris in the championship.\u00a0Bryn Lennon – Formula 1\/Formula 1 via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Verstappen, 28, won emphatically from pole position, and resisted backing up the pack in the hope that Norris would be relegated into Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc<\/a>‘s clutches, and below the third place he needed to land the title.<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> attempted the tactic back in 2016, although his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg<\/a> prevailed as champion.<\/p>\n

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Verstappen continued: “I had a lot of scenarios in my head. But I knew once Oscar [Piastri] was on the hard tyres, that would make backing up quite difficult. The others couldn’t follow that well either.<\/p>\n

“Charles drove his heart out today to try and get on that podium so that was impressive to see, but then he went on to a two-stop strategy and that made it even more complicated, and the new layout makes it harder than 2016, too.<\/p>\n

“I kept looking up at the screen and hoping something would pop up. Every straight, I kept looking to see if something was happening, but it didn’t and that is racing, and I am not too fussed about it. I have no regrets about my season.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen refused to blame his road-rage with George Russell at this season’s Spanish Grand Prix for costing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-334182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}