Verstappen lashes out at Hamilton: 'I thought this was behind us'

Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton met on track a lot less often this season than in 2021, but at the Brazilian Grand Prix they hit it off straight away. Verstappen suspects that Hamilton has not quite been able to put last year's bitter rivalry behind him.

Verstappen thinks last year's bitter fight is still very sensitive with the Mercedes driver. "After last year, I had thought that this was behind us, that we could just race against each other," the Dutchman explained, according to the AD. However, he noticed that Hamilton had no intention of giving him even an inch of space. "There was zero intention on his part to leave space for me," he said.

It resulted in a collision and Verstappen was singled out as the main culprit, but he far from agrees with that verdict. He argues that the rules are unclear on how far you have to be wrong to force space from your opponent, but thinks he was 85 per cent wrong in this case.

Verstappen's intention was not to crash, but simply to have a fight. "I wanted to race, thought we were racing too. But if the other does not want to be part of that... Fine, but then we both go off," the Red Bull driver said.