Max Verstappen decided not to share his opinion on Lap 1 penalty in F1 Saudi Arabian GP, as Oscar Piastri, Andrea Stella and Christian Horner share their views.
After the happenings back in Singapore in 2024, things mellowed a bit from Red Bull’s Verstappen in terms of his interaction with the media especially in the FIA-mandated press conferences. But post the F1 Saudi Arabian GP, the Dutchman brought back those memories again.
He refused to discuss or share his opinion on how he felt about the 5s time penalty for the Lap 1 move in Jeddah, which seemingly cost him a potential F1 race win – considering he finished less than five seconds off Piastri. He put it on his quotes being misused in social media to cause a stir.
He doesn’t wish to get into social trouble and or trouble with the FIA which is why he spoke only about how the grand prix panned out, where he was surprised by the pace. His team boss Horner spoke at length about the harsh call. He even brought a screenshot of an onboard of the Dutchman.
It showed Verstappen slightly ahead of Piastri going into Turn 1. Horner wanted to appeal, but he reckons it is highly unlikely that they will since the stewards think it was a slam dunk penalty. Since Red Bull thought otherwise, they didn’t ask the Dutchman to give back the position.
Horner praised the work done by the engineers to provide Verstappen the car to fight. McLaren team boss Stella too had praise for the work done by Red Bull to be so close in the end. He, naturally, felt the penalty call was fair enough – much like how Piastri felt from within the cockpit too.
Stella praised Piastri’s drive and also shared a story from the pitwall where Lando Norris’ race engineer helped Piastri’s race engineer with an info on tackling Lewis Hamilton. Piastri didn’t think it was an easy win as he had to work hard, considering how close Verstappen was.
Race –
Piastri: “I mean, the fact that I crossed the line first, to be honest. It wasn’t the easiest of wins. I think the start was tough, the first stint was tough behind Max. And then once I had some clean air, it was a bit easier to manage. But I still couldn’t afford to take my foot off the gas. It was a difficult race, and Max was quick behind me, so I had to keep pushing. And, yep, I think I could control it reasonably well, but it was a little bit tighter than I would have liked. I don’t know how long I could’ve done that, but I felt like I was taking decent risks for the race. The last lap, obviously, I wanted to see exactly what I had, but there’s not too much point taking a crazy risk as well. So I think once we had some clean air, our pace was okay. But the end of the Medium stint, I had nothing for Max and it was a struggle.
“So I think the pace wasn’t as much of an advantage as I wanted it to be, but it was good enough. I think our car was still quicker. I think it was difficult to be in dirty air. Max was quicker than I expected for sure in the race. I thought over one lap it wasn’t a huge surprise to see Max quick, but in the race, I wasn’t expecting to struggle so much at the end of the Medium stint, that’s for sure. So clearly we’ve got some work to do. I think our car is still very good, but when you look at the layout here compared to Suzuka, it’s the most similar so far, and it’s been the two where Max and Red Bull have been closer. I think we still have an advantage. I don’t think it’s as big on surfaces like this and layouts like this, but we still have a very strong car at the moment.”
Verstappen: “Yeah. I was very positively surprised, to be honest, because on Friday, it was very, very tough. And it didn’t matter what I was doing in terms of driving, management, the tyres would just fall off. The car was a lot nicer. Still limitations, but it was much more promising. And actually, at one point when I started to pull away again, I was quite surprised, positively surprised. We have to stay a little bit calm because this track doesn’t have a lot of deg, and we know that when we go to tracks where there’s higher deg, we just struggle more. We still need to work on that. But the changes that we made already yesterday also worked for today. So I’m very pleased with that. It’s impossible to say [how close we are to McLaren]. I also haven’t looked at numbers. For me, I was just positively surprised with my pace. It was much better than what I expected it to be. So that’s a good thing.
Stella: “You are absolutely right. It is one of the things that I actually admitted, we seem to have a good capability of interacting with the tyres in a gentle way and we could produce strong pace at the end of the stint. If we look at the first stint today, Verstappen had better pace at the end of stint one and then Leclerc took it to another level like Oscar. In fairness, we pitted Oscar because that’s what we had anywhere, he [the tyres] started to degrade and it started to degrade to a point that it was a risk pitting ahead of Verstappen, so we needed to go. This was a little bit somehow unexpected because we thought we could once again here utlise the strong feature of the car.
“But I think, it just shows once again that not only from a pace point of view but we saw from a tyre exploitation point of view, everything is so tight and close that there could be small variabilities associated with the tarmac characteristics, the way the tyres are being used, how the tyres are driven and it changed the balance, it changed the pecking order. I think for us the message is clear, the margins are tight and we need to execute race weekends in a perfect way if we want to continue this strong start to the season.”
Horner: “I think they were all flatout. The hard tyre was very robust today, so there wasn’t really any tyre saving. So I think let’s focus on the positives. We qualified on pole. We finished second. We had the pace, which, on Friday, looked like McLaren had got 1.2 seconds on the whole field. So we’ll take encouragement out of this race that on both medium and the hard tyres. I’m sure the analysis will show that we were quicker than them this weekend. I think the engineering team has done a good job in giving him a car by the time he got into qualifying and indeed in the race.
“It is probably our most competitive race of the year in Jeddah. In terms of raw pace, we were able to pull away from the McLaren, we closed on them down here. We will take some encouragement out of it, we are only 12 points behind the new leader in Oscar and two points behind Lando. There’s awful lot of positives that we can take out of the weekend. The frustrating thing is that I felt we had beat them today, unfortunately a really marginal call…that first chicane has been the difference.”
Turn 1 moment –
Piastri: “I got a great launch and got myself alongside. And from that point, I knew that I obviously had to brake quite late, but I knew that I had enough of my car alongside to take the corner. We obviously both braked extremely late. For me, I braked as late as I could while staying on the track. And I think how it unfolded is how it should have been dealt with.”
Verstappen: “Yeah. Start happened, Turn 1 happened, and suddenly it was lap 50. It just all went super-fast. The problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it because I might get penalised also, so it’s better not to speak about it. It happened very fast. I think it’s better not to talk about it. Anything I say or try to say about it might get me in trouble.”
Stella: “The situation in corner 1 was very close in fairness. This is a business of close margins and this time Oscar, thanks to a very good launch of the grid and thanks to positioning the car in the inside slightly ahead of Max, managing to keep the car within track limits, then he gained the rights and obviously in that situation you can’t overtake off-track. I think the case is very clear and like we did with Lando in Bahrain, you may remember we realised that we are overtaking Hamilton off the track and even if kind of Hamilton drove us off the track but once again he is Lewis Hamilton, he knows how to race. For us, we just needed to instruct the drivers that we need to give the position back. I think this is a clear case, it shouldn’t create any polemic really and if anything I want to take the opportunity to emphasise how well Oscar is racing. It is clean racing, tough racing and extremely precise.”
Horner: “I thought it was very harsh. We didn’t concede the position because we didn’t believe that he’d anything wrong. You can quite clearly see at the apex of the corner, we believed that Max is clearly ahead. The rules of engagement they discussed previously, and it was a very harsh decision. If we had given it up, you’re obviously running in the dirty air as well, we’d have dropped back behind and could have been at risk with George. So the best thing to do was, at the point we’ve got the penalty, get your head down, keep going. I think what was a great shame today was that you can see our pace, versus certainly the McLarens and all other cars in that first stint on the medium, we were in good shape. We had to serve the five-second penalty and, thereafter, on the same basic stint as Oscar, he finished 2.6 seconds behind.
“So, without that five-second penalty today, it would have been a win, but there’s always going to be a difference of opinion over a very marginal decision like that. When you look at that, I can’t see how they got to that conclusion. They’ve both gone in at the same speed. Oscar has run deep into the corner. Max can’t just disappear at this point in time. So perhaps these rules need a relook at. I don’t know what’s happened to ‘let them race’ on the first lap. That seems to have been abandoned. Everything has to be objectively looked at in isolation, and that’s a really marginal call. I think the stewards, obviously… we spoke to them after the race, they think it was a slam dunk. So the problem is, if we’re to protest it, then they’re going to most likely hold the line.
“We’ll ask them to have a look at the the onboard footage that wasn’t available at the time. But, yeah, I think that’s what it is. We’ll put this in front of them first, but I think it’s highly unlikely. It could be no further action [when things are noted]. You would give up the lead and we felt that we really haven’t done anything wrong, first corner, racing incident, two cars going in…I don’t know where he’s supposed to go, at this point he can’t just vanish. Oscar’s had a good start, Max’s had an average start, they ended up….as per as their thing, front wheel ahead has to be at least in line with the mirror. It’s very, very, very close.”
Why not speaking on the matter –
Verstappen: “It has to do with social media in general, and how the world is. I prefer not to talk a lot because sometimes your words can be twisted or people interpret it in a different way. It’s honestly better not to say too much. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Like I said before, it’s just the world we live in. You can’t share your opinion because it’s not appreciated apparently, or people can’t handle the full truth. Honestly, it’s better if I don’t say too much. It also saves my time because we already have to do so much.
“It’s honestly just how everything is becoming. Everyone is super sensitive about everything. And what we have currently, we cannot be critical anyway. So less talking – even better for me. I know I cannot swear in here, but at the same time, you also can’t be critical in any form that might ‘harm’ or ‘danger’… Let me get the sheet out. There’s a lot of lines, you know? So that’s why it’s better not to talk about it – you can put yourself in trouble, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”
Racing against Piastri –
Verstappen: “I think I’ve said it before. People forget a little bit – last year was his second year. Now he’s in his third year, and he’s very solid. He’s very calm in his approach, and I like that. It shows on track. He delivers when he has to, barely makes mistakes – and that’s what you need when you want to fight for a championship. And I think with Mark by his side, he’s helping him a lot. It’s great. People learn from their own careers – that’s what I had with my dad, and Mark is advising Oscar. At the end of the day, Oscar is using his talent, and that’s great to see.”
Piastri’s move to clear Hamilton –
Stella: “You have given me the opportunity to tell a story. The story is that Lando’s race engineer proactively told Oscar’s race engineer, ‘we struggled to pass Lewis because we attempted twice in corner 27 and he passed us back in corner 1, so make sure that Oscar knows that and he gives it a go directly in corner 1’. I was very proud on the pitwall to hear that, I didn’t need to prompt anything, just a spectator to an example of a great team spirit and team work that we have at McLaren. So, well done to Will Josef, well done to Tom Stallard, well done to the team at the pitwall. Today for me, it was one race like Baku [of 2024]. In Baku, it was very tensed if you remember with Leclerc.
“But somehow, I was so calm because it is one of those in which Oscar is in control and he knows very well what he’s doing. Personally, I didn’t have any kind of particular exciting moment there. He was very confident, he was very in control of the situation and like I said I think he also knew that corner 1 was his chance. Also, personally I think that Hamilton is a very-very fair competitor and I think he knows that if it wasn’t in that corner, it would have been the next corner, there was an opportunity. I don’t think it was a breaking to create the most disruption to Oscar’s lap. I was relatively calm.”
Here’s Oscar Piastri move on Lewis Hamilton: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-saudi-arabian-grand-prix-piastri-powers-past-hamilton-to-take-p4.1829946076200567900
Here’s win for Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-saudi-arabian-grand-prix-piastri-crosses-the-line-to-take-his-third-win-of-the-year-and-the-championship-lead.1829949735077519050
Here’s how F1 Saudi Arabian GP panned out
