Verstappen: Grosjean "caught me by surprise"

Verstappen was battling back after an earlier pitstop delay, and was passing car after car on supersoft tyres when he came up against Grosjean, who was in no mood to let him past.

"It wasn't really a move, in my vision," said Verstappen. "In the lap before, I already braked in the same place as when I crashed, but you could see when I crashed that the car in front of me braked earlier.

"Going at that speed when you're close to each other, you can't do anything. You don't expect him to brake. I tried to avoid it, but it really caught me by surprise."

Verstappen was able to extricate himself from his wrecked Toro Rosso.

When asked how he felt, he replied: "Not too bad, a bit stiff at the moment. I can still walk, so that's fine.

"It was a bit painful in my arms, but I managed to get out as quickly as I could and to stand up is always better than to sit in the car."

Up until his crash, he was delighted with his race pace.

"The race was really really good, we had great pace on the supersoft. We had a little fuss in the pitstop, and lost 20s, so we pitted for another supersoft set and from then we were flying.

"I caught up with Sebastian [Vettel] and Nico [Rosberg] in front of me and I just decided to stay behind them, so I had a chance to overtake the cars they caught."