McLaren say Verstappen penalties ‘not enough’ after ‘ridiculous’ Mexico move

McLaren team chief Zak Brown praised the race stewards for handing Max Verstappen 20 seconds in penalties on Sunday, adding that it was “probably not enough” after the three-time world champion finished sixth in the Mexico City Grand Prix.   

Verstappen, the series leader but without a win in 10 races since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, was penalised for his over-aggressive driving in two bruising incidents with Norris in the early stages of the race. 

In both, he pushed the Briton off the circuit as he had in similar circumstances a week earlier in Austin during the United States Grand Prix. 

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who leaves the team to be replaced by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton next year, won Sunday’s race ahead of Norris with his team-mate Charles Leclerc third in the second Ferrari. 

“It’s probably not enough. I mean it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I applaud the FIA stewards. Enough is enough. Let’s just have some good clean racing moving forwards,” said Brown.

“I think the stewards are on it, I think that’s clear by the penalties that were given. The stewards did a good job this weekend.”

Norris said: “I knew what to expect, I didn’t want to expect such a thing because I respect Max as a driver, but I was ready to expect something like this and this is not very clean driving in my opinion. I avoided it and it was a good race.”

Verstappen started from second on the grid alongside pole sitter Sainz and passed him at the start to lead the early laps before the Spaniard passed him shortly before he began his scrap with Norris. 

The result meant that Verstappen’s lead in the title race was trimmed by 10 points to 47 while in the constructors’ championship Ferrari overtook Red Bull to move up to second, 29 points adrift of leaders McLaren with four race weekends remaining. 

Verstappen shrugged off the penalties as “quite big” but said he felt more concerned at Red Bull’s loss of competitive pace which contributed to his being involved in controversial incidents. 

“The problem is that when you’re slower you are being put in those kind of positions and I’m not going to give up easily,” he said. 

“At the end of the day, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing about penalties… The only thing is 20 seconds is quite a lot, but the biggest problem of today and something that I worry about is the race pace which was really not good and something that we need to analyse.

‘Dangerous territory’

“Even without those penalties we had no chance at all to fight up front.”

He added that he was not too concerned about seeing his lead cut in the championship. 

“I’m not worried,” he said. “This was just a really bad day for us, but I also know we can do much better than this so we just keep going at it.”

On a bad day for Red Bull, with Sergio Perez also penalised five seconds for making a false start before eventually finishing 17th, team boss Christian Horner was defensive. 

“Max didn’t leave the track at Turn Four and at Turn Seven Lando opened the door late and both ran off,” he said. 

“But the problem is that this is dangerous territory – when is a ‘dive bomb’ going to be ok?

“The drivers and the FIA need to sit down together and sort out some agreement. The two time penalties for Max were a bit on the hard side today. We have to play to the rules and we will learn from today.”