More crashes ahead: 'Lewis knows how aggressive Max is'

F1 News

23 September 2021 at 09:18
Last update 23 September 2021 at 11:17
  • GPblog.com

Ahead of the Russian Grand Prix at Soch in an interview with Sky Sports F1 Martin Brundle looks back at the crash between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Monza, and the repercussions it will have for the rest of the season.

The famous Monza-crash

Brundle again describes the crazy coincidence of Hamilton and Verstappen coming together at all in Italy: "A bizarre set of circumstances there. Max had an extremely slow pitstop and hadn't got away out front because Ricciardo beat him to the first corner. Lewis had a slower pitstop, and such as this world championship, they ended up at the same place at the same time down into turn 1."

"Max was driving angry because of his slow pitstop and he was just put out of position in the race. I think there was a bit of history there from Imola, from Barcelona, from Silverstone of course. Lewis knows he can't yield to Max, Max is aggressive. One way or another, they are going to keep meeting in the middle." Brundle said.

Elbows

The question is whether both men will concede anything now that the championship battle is so intense: "I think psychologically, yes. They've got to show each other some fairly robust elbows. They've got to keep it sensible of course, but we know how aggressive Max is, and Lewis knows that. And Lewis knows you've got to fight fire with fire. If we see this again I wouldn't be at all surprised. We got two truly great drivers in very similarly paced cars. They are going to be sharing the same piece of tarmac again."

Should Max have checked in with Lewis?

Finally, Brundle is asked if Max should have gone to check on Lewis after the crash: "Finding reverse gear in an F1-car is not the easiest thing to do. And Lewis was trying to reverse out. I think Max recognized that. I don't think there is not a lot of love lost between them. I think Max was fairly bruised literally about the incident in Silverstone. So I don't think he showed a huge amount of concern, but he quite clearly knew Lewis was functioning and had found reverse gear and was applying it."