F1 stewards make penalty decision after Dutch GP incident left Verstappen raging

25 August 2023 , 17:03

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F1 stewards make penalty decision after Dutch GP incident left Verstappen raging

Nico Hulkenberg escaped punishment after blocking Max Verstappen on a flying lap in Dutch Grand Prix practice.

Traffic was always likely to play a part as Formula 1 returned to one of the shortest tracks on the calendar. And that came to pass early in second practice on Friday, much to Verstappen's displeasure.

The home hero was one a flying lap early on in the session when he came across a group of slow-moving cars waiting to start their own laps. Hulkenberg was at the rear of that group when the Dutchman caught up with those case at the penultimate corner of the track.

Verstappen had to brake hard to avoid a collision, aborting the lap. And he made sure the world knew how annoyed he was about it, swearing over the radio before shouting: "Unbelievable!"

Race control took a dim view of the near-miss and referred the incident to the stewards, who summoned both drivers after the session. But the Haas racer will receive no punishment.

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In a document explaining the decision, the stewards wrote: "The drivers agreed that Hulkenberg was affected by the cars in front of him and slowed, thereby impeding Verstappen.

"However, as this was FP2, the drivers agreed that it did not rise to the standard of 'Unnecessarily Impeding'. Further, as the closing speeds at this location are significant, the incident looked more dramatic than what it was, but the drivers agreed that it was not particularly dangerous."

Verstappen finished second in that session, having topped the timesheets in the first hour of F1 practice. And the Dutchman seemed pleased with his day's work as he bids to secure nine F1 wins in a row on Sunday.

He said: "We tried some things on the car and FP2 was a little more difficult. It's really difficult to get a clean lap, there are always a lot of cars around. We have a few things that we want to improve, but even on the long run the car was handling quite well. Overall, it was a good day."

Daniel Moxon