Red Bull chief Christian Horner was livid after his team’s driver Max Verstappen was handed a five seconds penalty by race stewards, after crossing the finish line in third place at the United States Grand Prix, demoting the young Dutchman to fourth.
Horner told reporters after the race, “There’s been cars going off track all day today and no action at all so I think it’s unbelievably harsh to give Max a penalty for that. It’s wrong, it’s wrong.”
“For me, it was fair, hard racing and I think that’s a bad judgement by the stewards to have made that call. We’ve seen cars off track all weekend so to penalise him at this stage is not right.”
Fans voted Verstappen Driver of the Day for his efforts, whereby he battled his way through the field from 16th on the grid. providing the bulk of the afternoon’s entertainment with his antics.
In the final laps he relentlessly reeled in the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen and on the final lap muscled his way past the Finn, but in the end to no avail as the stewards deemed he had transgressed track limits in his quest for third place.
Unbelievable. @Max33Verstappen takes P3 from RAI on the last lap only to receive a 5 second penalty! 😫 #USGP pic.twitter.com/UF5PC7u26K
— Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) October 22, 2017