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The 2023 Austrian F1 Grand Prix was eventful for a lot of reasons. Apart from it being a Sprint weekend, the race was filled with drivers being handed out penalties for going off track limits, starting with seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton to underdogs like Nyck de Vries.
However, there were moments during the race that captured the boyish and childlike rivalry between drivers. The following video captures Max Verstappen waving to Carlos Sainz as he overtakes him during the race.
This took place during Lap 26 when Charles Leclerc and Sainz were leading P1 and P2 in the standings. Max Verstappen missed his 250th successive lead, dating back to the Miami Grand Prix in May as he dropped to P3. Verstappen had tried to overtake Sainz but the Spaniard held his own. But he ended up getting an exit at Turn 3 and through he went to charge Leclerc, who was still the race leader.
Some fans have reacted to the footage, saying that maybe the Red Bull driver was stretching his fingers and his hands.
"He’s not waving he’s stretching his fingers and his hand," one fan tweeted.
Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz had a 'toxic' past during Torro Rosso days
Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz were teammates at Torro Rosso in 2015 and according to Helmut Marko, they shared quite a toxic relationship.
Before joining Red Bull in the early days of the 2016 season, Max Verstappen, who made his professional debut at the age of 17, outscored his Spanish colleague by 49 points to 18 in their rookie campaign. Verstappen then switched places with Daniil Kvyat.
Carlos Sainz, on the other hand, remained with Toro Rosso until the end of the 2017 campaign, at which point he joined Renault. He later changed teams to McLaren and is currently with Ferrari. However, Marko expressed pity for the Spanish driver having Verstappen as his teammate during his rookie Formula 1 season in an interview with The Red Bulletin.
Marko said:
“It was his (Sainz’s) bad luck to get Max as a teammate.”
However, Sainz has revealed that those rumors are "not true". He said:
"Everyone thinks we hated each other, but that certainly is not true, We had a lot of fun next to the job and we went much better together than people think. We were incredibly competitive on the track because we knew we were competing for our careers."
Carlos Sainz added that his former teammate who had made the headlines at that time for the wrong reasons, is one of the "most talented" drivers around.
