Max Verstappen offered few words after the F1 Saudi Arabian GP on his first corner clash with Oscar Piastri.
In a race with few highlights, the first corner proved to be the deciding factor of the race. Starting from pole position, Max Verstappen attempted to keep his lead into turn 1, with Oscar Piastri decisively taking the corner. The Dutchman ran wide and received a five-second penalty. Serving it at his pit stop, Verstappen was not able to pass Piastri for the remainder of the race.
Speaking in Parc Ferme immediately after the race, Verstappen was not in a talkative mood about the incident.
“I’m going keep it quite short. I just want to say a big thank you to the fans here in Jeddah. It’s been a great weekend. I love the track and, yeah, the rest is what it is. I’m looking forward to Miami. So I’ll see you there.“
Later, in the post-race press conference, he spoke of his delight at turning around a difficult start to the weekend.
“I was very positively surprised, to be honest, because on Friday, it was very, very tough. And it didn’t matter what I was doing in terms of driving, management, the tyres would just fall off.
“The car was a lot nicer. Still limitations, but it was much more promising. And actually, at one point when I started to pull away again, I was quite surprised, positively surprised.
“We have to stay a little bit calm because this track doesn’t have a lot of deg, and we know that when we go to tracks where there’s higher deg, we just struggle more. We still need to work on that. But the changes that we made already yesterday also worked for today. So I’m very pleased with that.”
Reticence to speak about Oscar Piastri first corner clash
Despite his success on Sunday, Verstappen was wary to confirm if Red Bull had indeed caught up with McLaren.
“I don’t know. It’s impossible to say. I also haven’t looked at numbers. For me, I was just positively surprised with my pace. It was much better than what I expected it to be. So that’s a good thing.
However, as in Parc Ferme, Verstappen refused to be drawn into any discussion of his start line clash with Oscar Piastri.
“Start happened, Turn 1 happened, and suddenly it was lap 50. It just all went super-fast. The problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it because I might get penalised also, so it’s better not to speak about it.”
“I think it’s better not to talk about it. Anything I say or try to say about it might get me in trouble.”
