Helmut Marko accuses Lewis Hamilton of ‘turning in’ on Max Verstappen in crash

Lewis Hamilton “turned in” on Max Verstappen when the Red Bull driver tried to overtake him up in the inside at Turn One at the Hungarian Grand Prix, says Helmut Marko.

Despite arriving at the Hungaroring armed with five updates for the RB20, Red Bull lacked the pace to challenge McLaren and that, coupled with a questionable strategy, had Verstappen seething.

A racing incident or Lewis Hamilton’s fault?

Heading into the closing laps having been undercut by Hamilton earlier in the race, the Red Bull driver made his move up the inside of Turn One but clipped the front right tyre of the Mercedes, briefly launching him into the air.

Airborne and off the track, Verstappen lost fourth place to Charles Leclerc but his RB20 was able to continue and the reigning World Champion finished the race in fifth place.

The stewards had a look at the incident but ruled it a “racing” collision with neither driver penalised.

Their ruling read: “It was clear that Car 1 locked up both front wheels on the approach to Turn One prior to any impact occurring but missing the normal cornering line for a typical overtaking manoeuvre.

“The driver of Car 44 stated that this was a racing incident, whilst the driver of Car 1 argued that this was a case of changing direction under braking.

“The Stewards do not consider this to be a typical case of ‘changing direction under braking’, although it is our determination that the driver of Car 44 could have done more to avoid the collision.”

They added that “no driver was predominantly to blame”, hence the decision to take no further action.

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‘Lewis Hamilton just turned in, everyone could see what happened then’

But if you ask Marko, Hamilton was to blame as he “just turned in” on the Red Bull driver.

Breaking down the race weekend in his Speedweek column, Marko said: “Then there was the last action, when Hamilton and Verstappen were lapping a Williams and Max spotted a gap, immediately jumped into the hole and then there was a collision.

“I spoke to Verstappen about it: Of course, the wheels of his car locked when braking, but he would have made it through the corner, so there was no question of him losing control of his car.

“Max was ahead, but Hamilton just turned in, everyone could see what happened then.

“So we ended up in fifth place, although we must not forget that in terms of pure speed we were just behind McLaren.”

The crash capped a “difficult” weekend for Red Bull with Verstappen not impressed with the team’s upgrades, Red Bull’s strategy nor the team’s call for him to give second place to Lando Norris after their moment on the opening lap.

“The whole weekend was difficult,” Marko conceded. “For example, we missed pole position with Max by just 46 thousandths of a second, which annoyed Verstappen a lot because he had hoped that the improvements to the car would put us two-tenths ahead of the competition. That wasn’t the case.

“Then came the first lap of the race, with what I thought was a very good maneuver by Max, who got on the outside of the McLaren on the left, was then pushed off, moved into second place and gave that position back to be on the safe side.

“In retrospect, it is not 100 percent certain that Verstappen would have received a five-second penalty there, so it might have been better to hold on to his position – simply because so much time is lost when overtaking on this track.

“One thing led to another, emotions ran high, with comments from the race engineer and also from Max that were inappropriate, to put it politely.”

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