Max Verstappen has branded Mercedes duo George Russell and Lewis Hamilton “silly” for not letting him pass on the pit exit during FP2 on Friday evening. The hour-long session had been disrupted due to two red flags, leaving teams with limited time out on track to find the right set-up for qualifying and Sunday’s race.
When the session resumed with just 16 minutes remaining, a host of drivers immediately headed out of their garages down the long pit exit. That led to a bit of a queue to get out on track with drivers trying to work out some space for themselves.
Verstappen found himself towards the back of the slow-moving queue and was not prepared to wait as he blew past Russell aggressively before shoving Hamilton out of the way. The Dutchman moaned on team radio that he was “getting blocked” by Hamilton and called out the Mercedes duo after the session.
“They have to move!” he told Sky Sports. “They’re all driving slow and I want to go out because we’re all limited on time and they just keep driving in the middle.
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“And when I tried to pass, they tried to squeeze me in the wall, so a bit silly.” Earlier on in the session, Verstappen moaned about Alex Albon for doing exactly what he did to Russell and Hamilton in the pit lane.
The Williams driver wanted to get on with the practice session after the first red flag and zoomed past a few drivers to get going on the pit exit. But Verstappen was not impressed, moaning on team radio: “Ah yeah, lovely, well done there.”
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He then asked his race engineer: “Can you please report that?”
Verstappen also isn’t overly confident about his team’s chances of finishing the season with a win in Abu Dhabi until they sort their set-up out. “I didn’t learn much today. The balance of the car was not good,” Verstappen explained.
“We had a lot of understeer and the car often jumped away. I didn’t expect to be so far behind. That’s a question mark for us. We were still third, so that’s not too bad, but in terms of balance, it still needs to be a lot better.”
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