With the Drivers’ Championship title already secured, Max Verstappen came into the final race weekend of the 2024 season without much pressure. Still, the Dutchman managed to cause quite a tension when he made contact with Oscar Piastri on the first lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
This dramatic start prolonged McLaren’s anticipation and nerves of winning the Constructors’ Championship, because Piastri lost huge amount of places due to the collision and ultimately came to finish in P10. While this incident also damaged Verstappen’s race, the reigning world champion’s stakes weren’t nearly as high today.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason why the Red Bull driver takes the blame for this when describing the situation.
“Yeah, launch was good,” commented Verstappen after the Abu Dhabi GP. “Then I tried to grab the inside and I quickly realized once I committed to it that the gap was closing. And I wanted to try and get out of it because I didn’t want to naturally, of course, crash with Oscar.
“But unfortunately, we still clipped each other. But I already apologised to Oscar. It’s not what you want to happen and especially, you know, with him. He’s a great guy.
“But yeah, it happened. It’s just a bit unfortunate.”
Verstappen’s reaction to the penalty
For this incident at the start of the Abu Dhabi GP, Verstappen quickly got a 10-second penalty which he took during his pit stop as usual. Initially, over the radio, he didn’t seem very happy about it and joking about getting even harsher penalty. And even after the race, his attitude didn’t change much.
“Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just happy that the season is over,” Verstappen reacted to the mention of his penalty.
“For me, the most important thing that I had to do is just apologise to Oscar because, you know, I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose. I went for it. It didn’t work out. And especially also for him, that we both spun, it’s not nice.
“You know, he’s a friend of mine, so I don’t want to have any, like, weird feelings or whatever going into the break.”
Aside from the 10 seconds, he also received additional penalty points to his license – just a week after adding another two in Qatar.
“I don’t understand anything anymore, but it’s fine,” he said to that.
“I mean, whatever. I’m not going to get angry about stuff like that. It’s not worth my time. And yeah, just a happy break.
“Like I said, the most important thing is that I apologize to Oscar. That’s it.”
Verstappen’s explanation of the incident
The Dutchman goes on to explain the situation further: “The thing was that I think when you’re in that position, you’re focussing on the car ahead. You commit.
“You never really… I mean, that’s how I feel it as well… When you start first or second, you never really look behind. So I went for it and then I realized ‘sh*t he doesn’t see me there’. So I was trying to get out of it, but then we still clipped.
“Of course, that is on me.
“But I was expecting maybe 20 seconds, 30 seconds. I don’t know. Stop and go. It’s maybe something to talk about for next time,” he joked in the last part.
Verstappen on finishing P6 in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Verstappen started fifth on the grid and after an interesting race, he managed to cross the finish line only one place down in P6. Aside from the first lap, we didn’t really get to see a lot of the four-time world champion in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – the main focus was, after all, on McLaren and Ferrari today.
The collision with Piastri plus the consequential penalty excluded Verstappen from the potential podium fight. He also mentioned problems with overheating tyres, because of which he “couldn’t really attack anything, and that was it”.
In the end, when asked if he was “glad to put RB20 into the museum”, Verstappen responded with a telling “yep”.
Both him and the Red Bull team know what they’ve got to work on throughout the winter break.
