Max Verstappen digs out Red Bull with cheeky Hungarian Grand Prix comment

Max Verstappen joked that the Red Bull pit wall ‘wasn’t there’ during the Hungarian Grand Prix. The three-time world champion blasted his team’s strategy on the radio after being undercut by both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

The Dutchman did not have the pace to hang onto the coattails of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris during the opening stages of Sunday’s race but was comfortably the third-fastest man on track. However, much to Verstappen’s frustration, an inferior strategy left him stuck behind Hamilton in the battle for third place throughout the entire final stint.

Then, when the rest of the frontrunners made their final stops, Verstappen was undercut once again, this time by Leclerc. The Dutchman eventually got back past the Ferrari driver, but a collision with Hamilton following a desperate lunge at Turn One set him back two positions.

Verstappen made his frustrations known on the radio during the race. “No mate, don’t give me that bulls***,” he fumed at race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. “You guys gave me this f***ing strategy, OK? I’m trying to rescue what’s left. F*** sake.”

The 26-year-old then doubled down on his vendetta against the strategy team after the race. “Yeah, maybe they weren’t there!” he joked. Asked how the struggles happened, he replied: “Yeah I don’t understand it either. They have all the information there of course. Maybe I have to install that in my car, then I can do it myself.”

Delving deeper into his frustrations with the strategy calls, Verstappen explained: “We didn’t have the pace to fight McLaren today, but then I think we could still have had a P3. But the wrong strategy calls put me on the back foot where I constantly had to fight people, try to overtake, but it didn’t work.

“It was really hot. As soon as you get close to cars, the tyres overheat and basically all the advantage you have with the tyres is not working anymore. Of course, I’m annoyed, but I’ve been annoyed before.

“Sometimes you press on the radio to voice your opinion and that’s what I did today. I’m hoping that maybe the second pit stop would be a better call, but it wasn’t. For me, that is not distracting when I’m driving. Of course, I’m annoyed, but you also then focus back on what you have to do and that’s of course control the car.”

Verstappen’s strategy concerns should be shared by the team. After McLaren secured a one-two finish (albeit with strategy drama of their own), Red Bull’s lead at the top of the Constructors’ Championship has been trimmed to 51 points with one race remaining before the summer shutdown.