Max Verstappen 'almost killed animal' during Canadian Grand Prix in scary near miss
Max Verstappen returned to winning ways in an eventful Canadian Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen has revealed he came within inches of running over a groundhog during the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday. The rodents have caused problems in Montreal before, with Romain Grosjean and Nicholas Latifi among the former F1 stars who were unable to avoid a collision in recent years.
A pre-race photo posted by Valtteri Bottas showed that groundhogs were still loitering around Circuit de Gilles-Villeneuve, and while the Finn's caption asked them to 'stay in their hole' during the race, not all of them listened.
Just shy of the halfway mark in Sunday's Grand Prix, Verstappen had a near miss with a groundhog who had wandered onto the track. "He was almost dead," said the Red Bull star.
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"I started to get to the last chicane and I thought it was debris initially. I started to close in and then I’m like, oh my god, it’s an animal. So yeah, I swerved right at the last moment. I don’t know what happened after."
Sat next to Verstappen in his post-race press conference was George Russell, who informed him that he had seen the groundhog run off. "Good," responded Verstappen. "Luckily, I mean, if that hits your car...
"I really had to slow down for it because I was a bit off the dry line. Last year, of course, a bird flew into my car. So I didn’t want to have a groundhog stuck in my car as well."
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The near miss didn't end up costing Verstappen any Drivers' Championship points as he returned to the top of the pile with a hard-fought win in Montreal. He and Russell shared the front row of the grid, with the Mercedes star starting on pole, after posting the exact same time in qualifying.
A rain-soaked start made the opening exchanges interesting, and though the lead changed hands multiple times throughout the race, Verstappen and Red Bull got their strategy bang on as the reigning triple world champion finished almost four seconds clear of Lando Norris in second.
"It’s very rewarding," said Verstappen, who now boasts a 31-point lead over Charles Leclerc at the top of the Drivers' Championship. "I mean, it’s never an easy race. It’s easy to make mistakes, especially on the inters when they were almost becoming slicks.
"You know, it was very easy to go off because the track was drying in most places, but in some corners it was still a bit too wet to go to slick tyres. And yeah, that made it just very, very difficult. But it’s a lot of fun to drive these kind of races now and then. You don’t want it all the time because that’s too stressful, but I had a lot of fun out there today."
