Formula 1 stewards came under massive criticism for imposing a five-second penalty on Max Verstappen at the US Grand Prix.
The penalty took Verstappen away from a well-earned podium finish at Sunday’s race prompting the Dutchman to call the stewards an “idiot”.
Verstappen had a good race starting at 16th and moving all the way to third place after a fantastic last lap pass on Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari.
The race stewards investigated the pass and found that Verstappen had taken an unfair advantage by moving off-track in the last lap. They gave him a five-second penalty that demoted him from third place to fourth and stopped him while he was on his way to the podium.
Calling the decision “appalling”, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said cars have been going off the track the whole day and penalizing only Verstappen was “unbelievably harsh”.
Talking to TV crew after the steward’s decision, Verstappen said such decisions hurt the sport.
“We had a really great race, but with those stupid decisions you really kill the sport,” Verstappen said.
“It’s one idiot steward up there which always makes decisions against me.
“At the end of the day everybody is running wide everywhere, there are no track limits. At Turn 9 you can run wide, at Turn 19 you can go off the track and nobody will say anything.
“It’s the same with [Valtteri] Bottas – I went for a move, and he continued outside the track; he came back, I really had to pass him, and nothing has been done against that while he definitely gained an advantage. If he made the track, he would have been behind me.
“It’s not good for the sport – they have to be really clear on the rules that it’s not allowed.”
The fact that he cannot challenge the stewards’ decision frustrated the young Red Bull driver who found the whole situation “really weird”. He hopes the audience will stay away from next year’s race to teach a lesson to the F1 management.
“They decide and you can’t do anything against it, which is of course really weird,” Verstappen added. “What can we do? We cannot make up the rules.
“Everybody is loving it, its great action, you go five or 10cm on the inside of the kerb, everybody is running wide everywhere, they don’t say anything, and they kill the race, basically, like that.
“The crowd is loving it and then you do something like that in front of world TV – you pick up somebody from the podium and tell them to go away!
“It’s not good for the crowd. I really hope next year nobody is coming because like this the sport doesn’t make sense.”
