Lando Norris won the title by two points. Verstappen was asked if he regretted what happened in Spain in retrospect.
Giles Richards of The Guardian asked Verstappen in the post-race press conference if he regretted the incident with Russell in Spain in retrospect. In the end, he missed two points.
“You’re forgetting everything else that happened in my season,” Verstappen responded. “All you mention is Barcelona. I knew it was coming… Now you’re looking stupid at me. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s racing after all. You learn from mistakes. The championship is 24 races. I got a lot of early Christmas presents in the second half of the season too, so you can question that too.”
GP of Spain
Max Verstappen switched to hard tires under the safety car – he had one more set of soft tires, but according to the team they were already very worn, so their deployment was out of the question. A series of events followed – first a minor contact with Leclerc, then a fight with Russell, after which Verstappen went off the track. The team told Verstappen to return the position. He did, but as soon as Russell was next to him, he accelerated and crashed into him. He received a 10 second penalty for this.
Verstappen recently called it a moment he should have handled better.
“It was a mistake on my part and of course I will learn from it,” Verstappen said in November. “Similar moments won’t happen next year, even if we were in the same situation with the car. It’s the little things that you learn from, but overall, in terms of performance, the season was very good.”
