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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has accused Max Verstappen of committing a "revenge foul" for intentionally impeding Lewis Hamilton. The incident happened during the 2023 F1 Austrian GP sprint shootout, where Hamilton first blocked Verstappen on his fast lap. It then appeared that the Dutch driver repaid the favor out of turn 2.
The blocking did not have any impact on Max Verstappen's session, as he was able to make his way through but Lewis Hamilton missed out. The Mercedes driver was eliminated in SQ1 and forced to start the sprint outside of the top 15.
Talking about the incident where the two drivers got blocked, Toto Wolff did say that the communication issue between the team and the driver was to blame.
He did, however, make it clear that while Lewis Hamilton unintentionally blocked Max Verstappen, the Red Bull driver did it intentionally.
“The mistake happened on our side. The communication between us and Lewis didn’t give him the right information to get out of Max’s way. I think no one wants to be in anybody’s way because if you impede, you’re getting penalized, so that was not the aim," Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
“On the other side, Turn 1 was a revenge foul [by Verstappen]. It was just to make sure that his [Hamilton’s] lap was ruined. So one was not intentional, the other one was intentional – but who cares? At the end, we looked at whether it was going to change our race or not. But I think they’re going to talk about it at the drivers’ briefing next week,” he added.
Max Verstappen gives his take on the incident with Lewis Hamilton
Max Verstappen gave his take on the incident with Lewis Hamilton after the session. He accused the Mercedes driver of blicking him into the last corner.
Verstappen claimed that he lost around three-tenths of a second.
“He blocked me into the last corner, so I had to brake more and I lost like three-tenths. So that wasn’t ideal, and I think not correct. There was still a few seconds left on the clock so I didn’t know if my lap time was going to be safe and I wanted to continue. But ran out of time, space, with the two cars like that, which was a bit of a shame,” Verstappen said.
Max Verstappen ended up winning the sprint later in the day, while Lewis Hamilton could only finish P10 in the race.
