Verstappen defends Colapinto after Norris' scathing verdict on Baku crash

Norris was unhappy after an incident caused by the Alpine driver ended his Azerbaijan Grand Prix. According to him, Colapinto's actions should have had greater consequences. In the end, the Argentinian driver was handed a 10-second time penalty for the incident, but because he was unable to serve it, it will become a five-place grid penalty for the next race weekend.

The McLaren driver commented: "I think the FIA should be more strict and start handing out bans for this kind of stuff. It's just careless when people cost a lot of money. All my parts are in the bin now. So, if people should just get banned. This driving does not deserve to be in F1.

Russell was the first to react to Norris' verdict. The Mercedes driver said: "Yeah, I think that’s too harsh, personally. I think Safety Car restarts, cold tyres, a very small mistake can have big consequences. And from what I saw today, that’s what it looked like. It was a small error that had a big consequence. I think, personally, race bans should come from drivers intentionally doing something very dangerous and very reckless. So I think it was unfortunate."

The Dutchman did not agree with the defending world champion either. He said after finishing second in Baku: "I think as long, of course, the driver that caused it is aware of what he did, right, and apologized.

Hadjar then concluded: "From my side, I think the track is not good enough. You move out of the racing line, it starts to be very bumpy. It’s hard to generate temperature behind the Safety Car, it’s going quite slowly. So then, yeah, you just overdo it and then it has big, big consequences. So, I think, yeah, a race ban is way too harsh."