Red Bull Racing has faced a warning from the FIA after driver Max Verstappen discarded a towel left in his cockpit onto the track in Hungary.
Verstappen explained how he avoided a potentially dangerous situation by discarding the towel off the racing line.
Max Verstappen explains perplexing towel incident in Hungary
In the midst of Free Practice 2 ahead of the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen pulled off the racing line at Turn 3. Driving slowly, he took both hands from the steering wheel to fish a white cloth out of the cockpit, then toss it out of the car.
Though Verstappen was able to discard the rag, it did remain on the track, albeit well off the racing line.
The incident was referred immediately to the FIA race stewards, who investigated it as a potential example of an unsafe release.
Normally this is an incident punishable by a fine for the team, but in this case, the FIA ultimately opted to simply issue a warning to the team.
More tech updates from Formula 1:
👉 How Williams are looking to stay one step ahead with new FW47 updates
👉 Have recent updates stunted Mercedes’ W16 progress?
Speaking to media after the session, Verstappen offered a very calm explanation for what happened during that time.
“It’s just a towel that you normally wipe your face with when you come back in,” he said of the cloth. “It was still in the car when I went out.”
Rather than keep the cloth inside the cockpit, he opted to discard it.
“Instead of it maybe potentially flying in between my feet, which is the dangerous part, I drove off line, and I got rid of it in the safest way possible,” Verstappen explained.
“I think the stewards understand that.”
The stewards nevertheless wished to speak with Verstappen and a representative of Red Bull Racing, though the FIA ultimately came to the same conclusion: The incident was a mistake.
“The driver explained that while in the garage, the face towel had slipped from his lap to the side of the seat and the team was unaware that it remained in the cockpit,” the stewards’ report reads.
“When the driver realised it was there, he moved to the far right of the track and attempted to throw it as far away from the car and the track as possible.”
While the towel situation was easily the most notable moment of Verstappen’s during the session, that is largely thanks to the fact that Red Bull Racing is struggling at the Hungaroring.
“Today was very tough,” Verstappen said of his practice sessions.
“Just really low grip feeling and, yeah, not really a balance in the car.
“It’s even difficult to say, what is the exact problem? Nothing really works.
“So this is something that we have to investigate overnight, because so far, of course, yeah, it’s not been our weekend.”
While Verstappen is “sure we can do better,” he also admitted that “today was quite bad.”
“We need to really understand first, where it is and what what is causing us to have such a big problem with the car,” he said.
“I mean, McLaren looks really on it. They’re flying, but, yeah, naturally, of course, I want to be a little bit closer to P3.”
In FP2, Verstappen was very far from P3 indeed. He was only able to set the 14th-fastest time in FP2, and he regularly radioed in to the team to let him know that the car felt completely unbalanced. He described it feeling like driving on ice.
Yuki Tsunoda, by contrast, was the better performing of the two Red Bull drivers, finishing the session in ninth overall.
Of course, practice is not fully representative or race or qualifying pace, so Red Bull could very could have something left in the tank. Ideally, though, it’ll have taken care of any wayward towels before Saturday!
Read next: FIA confirm Red Bull punishment after Max Verstappen investigation triggers investigation