Max Verstappen 'collected DELIBERATE fine' in infamous Lewis Hamilton 2021 incident

A former close ally of Max Verstappen has revealed that the Dutchman may have deliberately collected a fine during his fierce 2021 championship battle with Lewis Hamilton.

Seven-time champion Hamilton, then driving with Mercedes, won three of the last four races of the season to take the championship down to the last race in Abu Dhabi, in which Verstappen came out on top in controversial circumstances.

But one of Hamilton's victories ahead of the Abu Dhabi showdown was a real display of how fast Mercedes were at the back end of the season, when the Brit recovered from being disqualified in qualifying to win the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Hamilton's Mercedes was disqualified due to a rear wing infringement, and his ability to cut through the field in the resulting sprint and main races to ultimately come out on top was evidence that he would not give up on an eighth world title easily.

Following the race in Brazil, Verstappen touched the rear wing on Hamilton's Mercedes, an offence that warranted a huge €50,000 fine.

Now, Verstappen's former trainer Bradley Scanes has suggested that it was a deliberate ploy from the Dutchman to get in the heads of Hamilton and the Mercedes team, knowing that he would not be handed a sporting penalty for the offence.

"Brazil is a good example [of the mind games] where Max went behind the Mercedes rear wing and was giving it a good feel," Scanes told the High Performance podcast.

"That was measured: he knew he was going to get a €50k fine and no impact on track."

Asked if Verstappen had spoken about touching the rear wing of the Mercedes beforehand, Scanes said: "Not [with] me personally, but in the team it was discussed.

"I think there was a change, for the last two races, they couldn’t run that particular wing, so that was helpful in its own sense because they absolutely ran away with that Brazil race.

"But even if nothing happened, that would have just shifted the focus, put a little bit of pressure in the media on them."

Verstappen's 2021 championship victory

Eventually, Verstappen claimed the 2021 championship on the last lap of the last race of the season, in one of the most dramatic moments in F1 history.

Since then, the Dutchman has gone on to win three more championships, while Hamilton has claimed just two race victories since that dramatic finale, and has not come close to challenging for another title.

Their rivalry in 2021 will go down as one of the fiercest in F1 history, with multiple collisions, words exchanged between the pair and between their teams, and a season finale in which both drivers were level on points in the championship pre-race.

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