Verstappen apology accepted by Massa

The storm in a tea cup caused by Max Verstappen's flippant remarks about Brazilians has been settled.

Verstappen had been criticised by Williams driver Felipe Massa for comments he made after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Verstappen felt he'd been blocked by Massa during qualifying.

"Well, he's a Brazilian – so there's not much to discuss," Verstappen had said afterwards. The comment was slammed by Massa as insulting to his compatriots and Verstappen subsequently issued a full apology on Facebook.

"He was hot headed and said things he should not have," Massa is quoted as saying by Brazil's Globo. "But I get along really well with him. I have no problems with him. To be honest I was only playing with him.

"I think he understood, because he apologised. That's the way it should have gone. He's a cool guy, a great driver and I'm sure with age, he's going to get better."

With that out of the way, Verstappen is free to look ahead to the next race on the calendar, the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi next weekend.

Verstappen apologises to Brazilians for disrespectful remark

Last year he arrived at Sochi as a Toro Rosso driver. But by the time he took to the track in Spain two weeks later, he'd been bumped up to the senior Red Bull squad.

"It’s an interesting track, it has a lot of long straights," said the teenager this week.

"Despite that fact, Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso have actually done pretty well on that track in the past.

"The corners are mostly 90 degrees, which you normally never experience. It’s quite a flat track. Not a lot of elevation changes and some difficult braking zones.

"It’s always challenging to come from high speed into a low-speed corner and achieve the best out of it in braking.

"I’m definitely looking forward to going back there and have a good race."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.