Max Verstappen refused to dismiss allegations that his late-race clash with George Russell in the Span꧂ish Grand Prix was intentional.

Four-time Formula 1 champion Verstappen and Mercedes rival Russell came to blows at Turn 5 in the final laps of the Barcelona race, resulting in the Red Bull driver picking up a 10♏-second time penalty.

Verstappen had slowed down on the approach to the tight left-hander, seemingly to hand back fourth place back to Russell as per Red Bull’s instructions, only to then speed u𒁃p again and slam into the Mercedes.

This was the second major incident between the two during the race, with 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Verstappen having run wide at Turn 1 while defending f🐼ourth place after t♒he safety car restart with six laps to go.

Verstappen had taken the escape road after their clash and rejoined ahead ofꦦ Russell, which kicked off a chain of events as♎ Red Bull instructed Verstappen to give way to Russell

Asked if his move on the Briton was intentional, a defiant Verstappen simply tol💝d Sky F1: “Doesn't matter.”

Pressed further that such an inci🃏dent matters to the viewers, he replied: “Yeah, okay. That's great. I prefer to speak about the race t꧂han one single moment.”

When asked if a number of frustrating i🍬ncidents during the race, including the call to switch to the slower hard tyre under the safety car, prompted that move on Russell, he rep🐠lied: “No”.

When told a controversial incident like this takes shine away from a driver who had pulled off a brilliant pass on McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to wꦬin the Emilia Romagna GP just two weeks prior, the Dutchman only said “Is it [so]?” 

He added: “Yeah, okay, well that's 💟your opinion. We will leave it there.”

Max Verstappen penalised for George Russell clash

The 10-second penalty demoted Verstappen from fifth to 10th, leaving with a single championsh✨ip point from the Spanish GP.

It was a significant setback for the 27-year-old in his hopes of defending the title, with Pi𓆏astri leading another McLaren 1-2 after a dominant race for the Woking-based 💮squad.

When told about the🦂 impact of the penalty on his title chances, Verstappen said: ”If there are any. I think we are way too slow anyway to fight for the title. That was clear again today.

“We tried to do three stops and it was quite good but we also ꧋needed it because we actually had quite a bit of degradation on the tyres so that was good. 

“Unfortunately, of course, the saꦕfety car came out in the end and we bas💦ically ran out of the tyres at the end and the hard tyre was clearly not the tyre. 

“When you only have six laps to go everyone can ༺go flat out, I was severely grip limited oꦰn the hard.”

Red Bull elected to bring Verstappen into the pits under the safety car even though it didn’t have a relatively unused set of s🍎oft and medium tyres to bolt on, leaving him with the slower hard tyre for the final part of the ꧂race.

Verstappen admitted that Red Bull needs to analyse whether it would have been better to keep him out on track, which would have handed him track position over Piastri and Lando Norris but left him vulnerable on worn ty🍸res.

”We have to look at it again. Of course, new tyres or at least fresh tyres🔥, they make quite a bit of difference as well. 

“No one maybe expected that the hard tyre was so 𒁃poor but when it was only six laps🦄 maybe it would have been better to stay out but of course that's really easy for me to say now.”