'Negative' Verstappen derails Sky Sports interview and leaves Kravitz baffled

17:06, 13 Jun

Updated: 18:46, 13 Jun

byNorberto Mujica

Sky Sports reporter Ted Kravitz had to face an 'unreceptive' Max Verstappen, who 'missunderstood' the journalist's question and thus forced the interview's premature end, Kravitz claims.

Speaking about the heated interview, Kravitz explained on his 'Podbook'. “He wasn’t in a particularly receptive mood about [the George Russell incident], so I thought I’d go with a question about the team mistake that led to that message in error to give the place back to Russell.”

“I asked him a question that I thought was going to be on his side and understanding his annoyance that set that whole fateful minute and a half off in the first place," added the British journalist, conveying an effort to reel Verstappen in,in order to succesfully continue onward with the interview.

“I said to him, ‘What are you going to be doing to improve the dialogue with your rules man – a guy called Stephen Knowles, who’s taken over from Jonathan Wheatley – to make sure that doesn’t happen again?’."

Max Verstappen seeks to turn the champiosnhip tide to his favor in Canada.

Interview goes south due to Verstappen's negative interpretation?

This is the moment when the interview broke down, noted Kravitz. “Max either misunderstood it by accident, or took a rather over-negative interpretation of what I was saying. He said, ‘I don’t think it’s fair for you to single somebody out. I would never single somebody out for criticism in the team’."

“What was I meant to do? Was I meant to say an ‘unnamed team representative that deals with the rules’? I said ‘I’m just not here to say it was Stephen Knowles wasn’t it? Let’s blame him’.”

“And then he just wouldn’t accept it. He just said, ‘Well, I think it’s not nice of you to do that’, at which point we ended the interview,” Kravitz concluded regarding the interview with 4-time world champion, Verstappen.