The Spanish Grand Prix came alive in the final stages! The restart after the safety car forced Max Verstappen – who had been put on the hard compound by Red Bull – to defend himself against Charles Leclerc. Due to the lack of grip on the white tyres, the Monegasque overtook him on the straight, although not without a fight. The Dutchman protested over the team radio, but no sanctions were imposed. Afterwards, Leclerc showed sympathy for Verstappen.
Before the restart, Max Verstappen – to his own surprise – had hard tyres fitted to his RB21. After all, he had no new set of softs left. On the straight, he managed to keep the car nicely on the asphalt while searching for grip, but that opened the door for Charles Leclerc. His Ferrari came alongside, and there was a brief touch between the two drivers. Verstappen was furious and called over the team radio for Leclerc to give back third place, but the stewards did not respond.
‘Nothing special’
Leclerc later stated that he understood Verstappen’s irritation. If he had been in the Red Bull driver’s shoes, he would probably have expressed the same frustration. “If the roles were reversed, I would probably have made my feelings known,” the Ferrari driver told the media in Barcelona. “After all, you are fighting for a third place. Of course, you try everything to protect that. He (Verstappen) probably also knew that it would be very difficult on those tyres,” Leclerc added.
Leclerc had little else to say about the incident. “It was nothing special,” the Monegasque said lightly. “I just overtook on the inside. He tried to push me onto the dirty side of the track, but I had more speed because he had to correct that mistake. Then I tried to get a bit into McLaren’s slipstream and moved a little to the side. Verstappen didn’t move aside, so we touched. Nothing else really happened.” The world-famous clip of Leclerc and Verstappen from their karting days seems to sum up the incident well: “Just a racing incident.”
