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Red Bull boss Christian Horner has revealed that the team had a pre-race chat with the race director about keeping an eye on potential "gamesmanship" against Max Verstappen during the F1 Canadian GP. The race weekend began with conversations around the Dutch driver having 11 penalty points on his license.
As part of the regulations, if a driver reaches 12 penalty points, they are banned for a race. Kevin Magnussen suffered from the same fate last season and became the first driver to do so. A lot of the storylines during the F1 Canadian GP revolved around Verstappen's penalty points, leading to the driver calling out the media for asking the same thing again and again.
In the post-qualifying media interaction, George Russell, who beat Verstappen to pole position, was questioned about the threat from the Dutch driver going into turn 1, to which the Brit had mentioned the driver's penalty points. Talking to Sky Sports after the race on Sunday, Horner revealed that the comments raised alarm at the team.
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Fearing some gamesmanship to try and goad Max Verstappen into an error, hence triggering a ban, Horner revealed that the team had a chat with the race director about the same, as they wanted to keep an eye on any such moments. He said:
"I think you could hear from George's press comments yesterday, his objective was reasonably clear. I don't think there was any surprises with that. I think that it's inevitable that there was going to be some potential gamesmanship. It's something that we raised after the drivers' briefing with the race director, just so that they were mindful of it as well because it's clear that kind of stuff goes on."
"But Max Verstappen, I thought he's been squeaky clean all weekend and drove a very good race today. We just said to him [the race director] could they please keep an eye on it because, there's been, obviously, comments that have been raised in the media, just please keep an eye on it."
As it turned out, Russell's sudden braking moment during the safety car period, which led to Verstappen overtaking him before falling back again, led to Red Bull lodging a protest against the Mercedes driver that wouldn't ultimately lead to anything.
Max Verstappen's opinion on the gamesmanship moment in the race
Max Verstappen wasn't pressing the gamesmanship moment a lot after the race, as the driver just put it down to the safety car being too slow. Talking to Sky Sports, the driver felt that there was a moment where George Russell sped ahead and would then slow down, which led to a bit of confusion.
“I think we were both trying to say to the Safety Car to speed up because he was only going 120kph, but I think maybe it was doing that to give a bit more time to maybe get a race lap in. So George was trying to speed up to the Safety Car and I was trying to do the same. Once, he tried to speed up to the Safety Car he backed out and it caused a bit of confusion,” Max Verstappen said.
The race ended with Russell picking up his first win this season, while Verstappen finished behind the Mercedes driver.
