It would have been close if Max Verstappen had crashed along with Lewis Hamilton after the former came out of the pit lane halfway through the Canadian Grand Prix. It all went off without a hitch, but afterwards the two gentlemen talked about it for a while. Hamilton did not know where Verstappen was, he explained to the Red Bull driver.
On lap 44, Verstappen dove in for a pit stop, to start the final stint of the race with a new set of the hard tire. Red Bull had calculated the pit stop in such a way that Verstappen would return to the track in front of Hamilton and behind race director Carlos Sainz with a quick tire change. This did not go quite according to plan, however, as Verstappen returned to the track side by side with Hamilton. The latter, however, let his Mercedes go wide, forcing Verstappen to the outside and having to slow down to avoid a collision. After the race, the men talked about this near-incident.
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Verstappen furious about Hamilton moment
Verstappen reacted furiously towards his team over the on-board radio. The Limburger thought that he should have come for Hamilton. “Why didn’t you **** make sure I ended up for him?”, Verstappen grumbled. He eventually managed to overtake Hamilton a lap later and after the race, the two protagonists looked back at the moment in the Cool Down Room, before the podium ceremony. The television screen in the room showed a replay of the near-crash between Verstappen and Hamilton, with the Red Bull driver saying: “That was very close!”
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Hamilton explains: “I was like, ‘where is he?'”
Hamilton immediately tried to explain the fact that he let his car go wide, forcing Verstappen to brake to avoid a collision. “Oh yes, I only saw you after a while,” said the seven-time world champion. “I thought: ‘where is he?'” Verstappen admits that he just couldn’t find enough speed to stay ahead of Hamilton. “There is little grip there (when exiting the pit lane),” said the Red Bull driver.
