Max Verstappen says he would have preferred to take a time penalty and try to pull out a 5-second lead against Lewis Hamilton rather than hand the lead back to the Mercedes driver.
Sunday's Bahrain GP delivered a thrilling showdown between the Red Bull and Mercedes drivers, with Verstappen pulling out the stops to catch and overhaul Hamilton in the final laps of the race.
The Dutchman managed to latch on to the Mercedes with four laps to go and then pass his rival on the outside of Turn 4. But the Red Bull driver put all four wheels off the track as he gained the upper hand, a move typically frowned upon by the stewards.
©RedBull
Verstappen subsequently gave back the leading position but lost momentum in the process, allowing Hamilton to secure his 96th F1 win.
On the cool down lap, Verstappen questioned why the team had not "let him go" and allow him a chance to build a lead in the final laps in excess of the 5-second penalty.
"Why didn't you let me go? I could have easily got the five seconds. I prefer to lose like that than to be second like this," Verstappen quipped over the radio.
Horner responded by saying that the team had been ordered by race control to hand back the position to Hamilton.
"It's of course a shame but you also have to see the positive," Verstappen said after the race. "We're really putting the fight on to them and I think that's great to start the year like that."
In his effort to reel in Hamilton a second time, Verstappen appeared to lose ground in the low-speed corners, an issue he had experienced since the start of the race.
"I don't know what happened there, I don't think that was completely solved the whole race in the low-speed corners," he added.
"We'll have a look at that, but overall we managed to finish the race of course, and score good points."
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