Christian Horner said Red Bull were concerned a penalty was on its way which is why they told Max Verstappen to give the spot back to George Russell.

Verstappen appeared to deliberately make contact with George Russell after being told to let him pass, giving him a 10-second penalty and three penalty points from the stewards.

Christian Horner gives Max Verstappen verdict after George Russell crash

Verstappen’s frustrations boiled over following the Safety Car restart in which hard tyres left him a sitting duck.

A bump with Charles Leclerc was followed by a Turn 1 divebomb from Russell with Verstappen again making contact.

Having held onto the P4 position, Verstappen was left furious after being told by race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to give the spot back.

Appearing to eventually comply, Verstappen then drove into Russell before eventually finishing the race in 10th following his penalty.

Asked for his reaction in the immediate aftermath, Red Bull boss Horner notably did not defend his driver.

“Max had a snap at the restart. Charles got alongside him and then George obviously tried to capitalise on that into Turn 1,” Horner said. “And it was very, very marginal.

“Now, on recent experience and looking at recent incidents, obviously it’s subjective. You’ve asked for guidance from the FIA, from the referee, essentially, there’s nothing come back.

“You can see that it’s been reported. It’s going to the stewards. It looked, for all intents and purposes that it was going to be a penalty. So therefore, the instruction was given to Max to give that place back, which he was obviously upset about and annoyed about, because he felt that one he’d been left no space, and two that George hadn’t been fully in control.

“So after conversation with his engineer, he elected to give the space back at Turn 5. There was contact between the two cars.

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to Max. But obviously the stewards deemed that he caused a collision and got 10 seconds and some penalty points, unfortunately. Which was very frustrating, because it leaves us with one point out of the afternoon on what should have been an easy podium.”

Pressed on Verstappen’s actions, Horner said it was clear the driver was “upset” but said they would have “internal discussions” about the incident.

“You could hear that he was frustrated. He didn’t agree with both Charles and George.

“So I haven’t had the chance to speak to him, because he’s had to speak to you guys. And now he’s up in the stewards so it’s something that we’ll discuss internally and look at.

“Obviously you can hear how frustrated he was. He felt that he’d been barged out of the way so there’s a lot of frustration that was in the car.

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“He’s had Leclerc take a swipe with him on the straight and then he’s got dive-bombed at one by George.

“In the way that these regulations are now, it’s all about where that front axle is. The drivers know the rules and they’re the rules that they’re playing to.

“Now the argument is: was George under control at that at that point in time, would he have made the corner?

“We’ve seen so many occasions this year where penalties have been given, we’ve seen some have been noted, we’ve seen some gone to the stewards.

“The next thing is, you’re expecting to get a penalty, so that’s why it was ‘do you know what? We are going to have to give this place up.’”

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