This is what Verstappen has to say about finishing under safety car

After the Italian Grand Prix there was a lot of criticism of the FIA. Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto felt that the governing body could have made decisions quicker and Christian Horner also said that there was'more than enough time' to have a restart. What do Max Verstappen and George Russell think of finishing under the safety car?

Verstappen explains

Verstappen said he too would have preferred to finish under normal conditions, but he feels what happened at Monza was mainly an unfortunate coincidence. The Red Bull Racing driver cited that Daniel Ricciardo's McLaren was stuck in gear and therefore lost many minutes. The location of the Australian's MCL36 was also very unfavourable, as a crane had to be used.

"that's why I guess they just run out of time. So, I guess it was very unfortunate," Verstappen said in the FIA press conference. "Normally, I think everyone wants to finish under green flag. But yeah, unfortunately, we were just short of laps. But I mean, I had a new Soft as well so I was not too worried. I mean, even if it was one lap shootout."

Verstappen was then asked if he thought the safety car rules should be changed to prevent a repeat. "You run out of laps, and then they still had to get rid of a few cars in between which then… you need them to catch up. We ran out of laps, they needed to extend the race but that's not possible." So Verstappen is a lot less critical, as is Mercedes chief executive Toto Wolff, by the way.

Russell agrees with Max

George Russell concurs with the words of the world championship leader. "Yeah, the same. You can't extend the race. Following Abu Dhabi, we had some discussions about races ending under the safety car. I think we looked at every single race since ’98 and it happened 10 times. Maybe that's wrong, don't quote me on that but maybe it's worth looking at. But you can't extend the race without enough so it’s just how it is."