Max Verstappen has been utterly dominating the sport currently; he’s now on an 8-win streak and is on track to break ex-F1 Champ Sebastian Vettel’s record for 9 straight wins if he wins his upcoming home race in the Netherlands. The Dutchman has not only fished first in 10 out of 12 races this season but has also been at the top of every session, be it qualifying or sprint races.
But he was almost kicked out of Q2 this Friday at the spa. For this, he went on to rant, express, and remove his anger on his race engineer Lambiase. However, the two-time world champion later apologized.
Max Verstappen’s fiery exchange with race engineer
Max took pole position in Friday’s qualifying, but Having almost been eliminated in Q2, Max surprised himself, the fans, the grid, and his race engineer. And not in a positive way. The poor lap resulted in him being so pissed and frustrated about it that he had a heated rant with his race engineer.
Max Verstappen went on the team radio after almost not getting into Q3 and said this, “just ****ing pushed two laps in a row” and that he doesn’t give a “****” that he had nonetheless made it through into Q3, to which GP responded, “OK, and then when the track was two seconds quicker for your final lap and you didn’t have any energy left, how would that have gone down?”
The above conversation clearly showed some tension between the driver and his race engineer, which led many fans to speculate that the relationship between Verstappen and Lambiase has gone bad. But these rumors were shut down by Helmut Marko.
He cleared up all the rumors and said it was nothing more than an “old married couple” argument. He went on to support the Red Bull prodigy by saying that he’s a little frustrated when he’s not able to perform, as he always wants the maximum. This is one of the traits that make him such a strong and competitive driver in the sport.
Red Bull team principal sheds light on Max Verstappen and Gianpiero
Lambiase’s bond
With an eighth straight victory at the Spa-Francorchamps track, the Dutchman maintained his huge lead over the competition, although radio transmissions between Verstappen and Lambiase showed things may not be going well between the two after some stern words were spoken. Following the controversy generated by the Red Bull driver’s heated discussion with his race engineer during the Belgian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen has discussed his relationship with Gianpiero Lambiase.
Max in a recent interview said “We were having a good time but, of course, he had to act serious… It’s very important. Without him, we won’t have these kind of results, so it’s a team effort. And we know exactly what we need from each other. It works really well like this, for me during the race.”
This was even supported by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, who said that the chat between the two of them may confuse the 200 million people who are related to them. However, Gianpiero Lambiase and Max Verstappen have a close relationship that is rooted in friendship. Christian went on to add that many race engineers would just lose hope and crumble under pressure, but GP has shown the character to deal with it firmly. He also said that GP is firm but fair with Max, and there is a lot of respect for each other between them, making GP an engineer Max can trust.
