Martin Brundle’s Red Bull sack claim in Max Verstappen’s ‘rubbish’ driving example

Martin Brundle believes Red Bull need to calm Max Verstappen down, saying if anyone at Red Bull spoke to him as he did to the team in Hungary, “that person would get fired”.

Verstappen cut a frustrated figure last time out in Budapest as he took on McLaren for the win in an upgraded RB20 that he declared more than once was “not good enough”.

Martin Brundle was ‘disappointed’ with Max Verstappen’s behaviour

His mood wasn’t helped when on the opening lap he ran wide as he battled the McLarens for the lead and was told to give P2 back to Lando Norris.

As his race strategy played out he was twice undercut and let loose at his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, saying: “No mate, don’t give me that s***. You guys gave me this s*** strategy, okay? I’m trying to rescue what’s left. F***!”

That was just one of his radio rants.

Verstappen has since cleared the air with GP, the team’s technical director Pierre Wache, and also team boss Christian Horner after the latter reportedly orchestrated a meeting in Spa on Thursday.

Former F1 driver turned Sky Sports pundit Brundle hopes that will lead to change as he was “disappointed” with Verstappen’s behaviour towards his team.

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“If you keep telling somebody that they’re always right, even if they’re wrong, then they’ll not change the way they go about doing things,” Brundle said.

“But I think it’s interesting to me to why Max is driving so angrily at the moment. It cost him at least third place, it may even cost him a victory in Hungary when he tripped over Lewis and was struggling.

“And you know, the team have done some incredible things for him on strategy to win races, to win World Championships, and I kind of imagine when he hit Lewis, imagine if the pit wall pressed the button and went, ‘That was rubbish driving Max, sort yourself out. Beep, beep, beep’.

“You know, it would be really odd, and that person would get fired. But it’s no different, is it, really?

“I’m a huge fan of Max, as I’ve said it many times before, and I said it, I remember on the grid last year somewhere, saying if I was going to choose one of the 20 drivers to go down the pub with it’d be Max. I like him as a driver. I like him as a person.

“But I was disappointed with that, with what he did. I don’t think you can rinse your team like that in public. Close the door, get back and understand why they were doing what they were doing.

“They were trying to give him the tyre offset, much better tyre at the end of the race. They underestimated how hard it was going to be to get past Lewis. They learned from that, but they’re always learning. So I think, I don’t think it was his proudest moment.

“That would be my takeaway.”

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