Verstappen: Raikkonen and Vettel ‘should be ashamed’

40

Max Verstappen says Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel “should be ashamed” after criticising his driving during the Belgian Grand Prix.

Vettel pointed the finger at Verstappen for triggering a first corner collision between the trio, while Raikkonen said the Dutchman will cause “a massive accident” in response to some later defensive driving from the Red Bull driver. However, Verstappen made it clear he felt the two Ferrari drivers were to blame for the contact on the opening lap and therefore have no right to be critical of his driving.

'I'll talk to Max about Spa', promises Vettel

"I think they should be ashamed to cause a crash like that with their amount of experience and then complain about me,” Verstappen told Dutch media after the race. "Then they don't have to make a drama about what happened afterwards. They have to understand I'm not happy with them screwing up my entire race.

"There was room for three cars. When I got alongside Kimi, he started squeezing me. If Vettel hadn't turned in and left one more metre of room, we would have all gotten through. On the video you can clearly see when Vettel turns in, he drives into Raikkonen. And then Kimi's car bumps into mine.”

And Verstappen admits he was more aggressive with Raikkonen later in the race as a response to the first lap incident with the two Ferrari drivers.

"If they screw up my race, I'm not going to make it easy for them. I think they should understand that. I'm not going to say: 'come on through'. But all that happened after Turn 1. If turn one hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been so aggressive and pushed Raikkonen out like that."

DRIVER RATINGS: Belgian Grand Prix

RACE REPORT: Rosberg wins at Spa as Hamilton recovers to third

Breakfast with ... Otmar Szafnauer

Silbermann says ... Spa too hot

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.