“You focus on commentating, I’ll focus on driving,” Max Verstappen tells Sky’s David Croft as broadcaster’s Jeddah agenda becomes clear.
Having spent the opening races stoking controversy over the futures of Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda, Jack Doohan, Lewis Hamilton and various others, the British broadcaster was handed a new victim last weekend when Ted Kravitz observed a heated exchange between Helmut Marko and Max Verstappen’s manager, Raymond Vermeulen.
Never ones to waste a good conspiracy theory, Sky, along with the usual suspects, claimed that the row was about the struggles the four-time world champion is having with Red Bull’s 2025 contender, and that Vermeulen was reminding Marko of the various opt-out clauses in the Dutchman’s contract.
In fact, it’s understood that, while justifiably angry at the under peforming RB21, in fact Vermeulen was raging over the series of botched pit stops his driver suffered.
That didn’t stop Sky jumping to conclusions however, and ahead of a weekend when we are set to witness the various pundits questioning one another – why do they do that? – Croft opted to get in on the act early by asking Verstappen directly at today’s official press conference.
“You focus on commentating, I’ll focus on driving,” replied the Dutchman, “we don’t need to worry about any other scenarios.
“A lot of people are talking about it except me,” he added. “Like I said before, I just want to focus on my car, work with the people in the team, that is the only thing I am thinking about in Formula 1 at the moment. I am very relaxed.”
Asked about the paddock discussion that fuelled the rumours, Verstappen said: “To my knowledge, I think they were having just a conversation about everything, which I think is allowed.
“If someone, of course, picks up on it, people can always see it in their own way, right, how people are discussing things?
“I think we were all left frustrated with the result and the things that went wrong in the race,” he admitted, “and I think that’s what my manager, Raymond, and Helmut spoke about, and even Christian came along as well.
“So they all had a conversation.
“I think that should be allowed,” he smiled. “We all care at the end of the day. We care about the team, we care about the people, we care about results. I think that’s quite normal.”
Asked about the title, he said: “I’m not thinking about that. I just go race by race and hopefully it will be better here than Bahrain if we can get in the middle of the two, we can be happy with that.
“Then we just move on, and the rest is out of my hands anyway. I think we are not the quickest, so naturally it is very tough to fight for a championship, but then it’s still a very long road.
“This time last year at round five it was all looking great and we all know how the season ended up, so I’m hopeful that we can still improve things but we will see what we get.”
And now over to hear what Naomi, Karun, David and Simon think Max was really saying.
