Verstappen's driving 'refreshing but dangerous' - Wolff

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Toto Wolff has described Max Verstappen's driving as "refreshing but dangerous" after he was criticised by the Ferrari drivers in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Verstappen was involved in a first corner collision with both Ferrari drivers, which Kimi Raikkonen did not blame him for but Sebastian Vettel said the Dutchman triggered. Raikkonen was angered by Verstappen's defending during the race and Wolff believes the driving style is likely to result in an accident at some stage.

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“Maximum attack!" Wolff said when asked for his opinion on Verstappen's moves. "He’s refreshing, for me. He’s a young boy that I like a lot. He comes in here, no fear, no respect, puts the elbows out and it reminds me of the great ones.

"It reminds me of Lewis, it reminds me of Ayrton Senna and you can clearly see that some guys around here are starting to think twice how to overtake him. Until now all that has proven that he’s on the right track.

"The FIA has not penalised it, the only thing that happened is he was given a hard time in some driver briefings, maybe next time he’s going to have an even harder time in the next driver briefing. I just fear that it might end up in the wall heavily one day. As much as we like his [unpredictability] … for me it’s refreshing but it’s dangerous.”

AS IT HAPPENED: Belgian Grand Prix

And Wolff sees the Turn 1 incident as a big help to Lewis Hamilton as the championship leader managed to climb through to finish third as team-mate Nico Rosberg won at Spa.

“I think Turn 1 was more helpful because it wiped out three of our direct competitors. Unfortunate for them but obviously they would have been between Nico and Lewis towards the end of the 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.