Verstappen barged past Sainz with a lunge up the inside at Turn 17 and the aggressive nature of the move left the Spaniard annoyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe pushed me off. He thinks he can whatever he wants just because he\u2019s racing the midfield,\u201d Sainz complained over team radio.<\/p>\n
Sainz continued his criticism <\/a>when he spoke to media including Crash.net<\/a> after Sunday\u2019s race, describing Verstappen\u2019s racing as \u201cborderline\u201d.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n When his former Toro Rosso team-mate\u2019s comments were put to Verstappen, the Red Bull <\/a>driver replied: \u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a bit of a jungle in the midfield, so I don\u2019t know what to say.\u201d<\/p>\n Sainz was unhappy with Verstappen’s feisty moves<\/p>\n Verstappen clashed with George Russell <\/a>on the final lap of the race, with the pair making contact.<\/p>\n \u201cOut of Turn 1 he clipped my front tyres and I think he picked up a bit of front wing damage,\u201d Verstappen said of the incident.<\/p>\n \u201cLuckily I didn\u2019t have a puncture, but that can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n The 28-year-old Dutchman downplayed suggestions that the contact was a result of past history between the pair, insisting it had \u201cnothing to do with the history\u201d.<\/p>\n Verstappen picked up a post-race five-second penalty<\/a> for crossing the white line at the pit lane exit, but it had no bearing on his result of fifth place.<\/p>\n Red Bull\u2019s decision to stop Verstappen under an early safety car and run long on the hard tyre ultimately backfired, though he was still able to salvage P5 after overtaking Charles Leclerc<\/a> on the last lap following a spin for the Ferrari <\/a>driver.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the pace was not too bad on the medium but as soon as I swapped to the hard compound it was just a lot more difficult,\u201d\u00a0Verstappen said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think now after the race it’s easy to say of course but I think that stint was just a bit too long.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen brushed off criticism from Carlos Sainz following their scrap in the \u201cjungle\u201d of Formula 1\u2019s midfield…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,5243,817,825,806,805,803,804,918,85,819],"class_list":["post-652322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-f1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-red-bull","tag-sports","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652322","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=652322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sainz](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/xpb_1408468_hires.jpg\")
<\/p>\n