Verstappen: Bottas' moves "dangerous, unnecessary and not clever"

The Red Bull driver was left furious over the way that he twice had qualifying laps wrecked when Bottas dived down the inside of him at Turn 1.

“It was just not clever, I think,” said the Dutchman. “I am preparing for my timed lap and I understand he wants a tow, but I think there was not one point he was able to overtake me and brake in a normal position.

“I lose my lap and he also destroys his lap, so I can understand it happens once – that the top speed is not too bad, there is no chance to do this. But to do it again in Q3... I don’t get it.

Asked whether Bottas would be penalised, Verstappen said: “I don’t see a penalty – but it was dangerous what he was doing. Dangerous, and unnecessary and not clever.”

Verstappen then said he had no interest in going to speak to Bottas about the incident.

“No. I don’t need to be the person to go to him, he should come to me."

When asked if he was not a bit curious to better understand what was going through Bottas’ head, Verstappen said: “I think nothing was going through his head at that moment, it seems like.”

Front row possible

Verstappen believed that, without the Bottas moments, he had a car that was capable of getting on the front row – just as teammate Daniel Ricciardo managed to do.

“If I check all the data before the red flag in Q3, I could have fought for P2, so it was a really good lap,” he explained.

“Of course we know the speed is there and we can overtake tomorrow, but I preferred to start on the front row [rather] than start ninth. Compared to the [1m]43.9[s], I was half a second up.

“Of course you lose a bit on the main straight but there were still two corners left where I still had some margin, so I think we could have fought for P2.”