Oscar Piastri led from start to finish to win the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday and extend his lead at the top of the drivers’ world championship.
While Piastri coasted to victory, Max Verstappen and George Russell clashed with just one lap left in the race when Verstappen was ordered to move aside but held his line as his Mercedes rival attempted to overtake on a corner.
The two cars collided, Russell backed off before being let through shortly afterwards, and Verstappen received a 10-second penalty from the stewards as a result, meaning he finished in 10th place instead of fifth, losing at least nine potentially crucial points for the drivers’ championship.
McLaren’s Lando Norris ultimately finished in second place while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc rounded out the podium in third.
After a relatively uneventful race, the drama began when Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli had a power failure and was forced onto the gravel. Race organizers deployed a safety car while they recovered his stricken car, forcing the drivers to bunch up together.
Then, as the race restarted, Verstappen seemed to briefly lose control of his car on a corner, allowing Leclerc to pass him on the straight. Leclerc clipped Verstappen as he eased past before Russell came up behind them and attempted to overtake on the outside, forcing Verstappen off the track.
The four-time world champion was left furious by the incident and argued over the radio as his team advised him to let Russell through into fourth place shortly before the two cars made contact.
“Ultimately we came home in P4 and he came home in P10. I don’t really know what was going through his mind,” Russell told broadcaster Sky Sports. “It felt deliberate in the moment.”
“Max is such an amazing driver and so many people look up to him. It’s just a shame something like that continues to keep happening. It seems totally unnecessary and never seems to benefit himself.”
Verstappen, for his part, refused to answer one way or the other when asked if the contact was intentional.
“Does it matter?” he told Sky Sports initally. When pressed for an answer he said “I prefer to speak about the race rather than one single moment.”
This is story has been updated with additional developments.
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