Max Verstappen - Why Hamilton's British GP penalty "should have been more severe"

Max Verstappen after his crash at Silverstone — Photo: © LAT Images

Hungarian Grand Prix

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Verstappen - Why Hamilton's British GP penalty "should have been more severe"

Hamilton was handed a 10-second penalty for lap one contact with Verstappen

Sam Hall

Friday 30 July 2021 08:00 Updated: 08:54

Max Verstappen has called for "common sense" to be applied from F1's stewards in future when handing out penalties after suggesting the 10-second punishment for Lewis Hamilton in the British Grand Prix 'didn't do anything'.

Verstappen claimed ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend that Mercedes had shown 'how it really is' with its "disrespectful" race celebrations after he had been airlifted to hospital after the lap-one collision at Silverstone.

Despite the addition of the 10 seconds that Hamilton served during a pit stop in the race, the seven-time champion still went on to win his eighth British GP.

The penalty decision is one that continues to grate with Verstappen.

“I don’t think the penalty was correct because basically, you take out your main rival and especially with the speed we have in our cars, we are miles ahead of the third-best team," explained Verstappen.

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"We are easily 40, 50 seconds ahead in normal conditions. A 10-second penalty doesn’t do anything so definitely that penalty should have been more severe.”

Asked what he wanted to see from stewards' decisions in the future, Verstappen added: “Common sense. I think that is it.”

Despite Red Bull calling for the penalty to be reviewed, the Hungarian GP stewards determined there was insufficient new evidence for them to do so, with the matter now closed.

Red Bull "can't change the outcome"

Verstappen now heads into this weekend's race over Hamilton with just an eight-point lead.

After leaving Silverstone scoreless, Verstappen conceded: “You can’t change the outcome.

"I’m not happy with what happened there, especially to lose that many points due to someone else. But it is what it is.

“We can’t really say a lot more about it. I hit the wall quite hard which is never what you want but we’ll try, of course, to have a good weekend here.”