Verstappen on racing approach: Nothing changed, why should I?

Verstappen had a horrid Spanish Grand Prix, where he finished tenth following a ten-second time penalty in the final stage of his race, which was undone by a late Safety Car.

Red Bull Racing put Verstappen on a three-stop strategy, which made a third-place finish guaranteed, but when the Safety Car came out to clear the broken-down Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli from the track, the Dutchman was called into the pits with Hard compounds bolted to his RB21, the only set available according to the team.

As such, Verstappen was a sitting duck with the Hard tyres, which meant he was driving on as while at the same time, Charles Leclerc and George Russell pounced, the former deliberately banging wheels with him on the straights and getting away with it, and the latter sliding into him in Turn 1.

The Dutchman took to the escape road, but his team instructed him to hand the position over to Russell, which infuriated him, while the FIA deemed that unnecessary.

With red mist now in control, Verstappen banged wheels with Russell, for which he was penalized with ten seconds as well as three penalty points added to his license, which makes him one point away from a race ban.

This factor will be something Verstappen's rivals will use against him now, knowing they may be able to push him while he won't be able to push back, but in what seems to be a warning message, he insisted he will not change his racing approach.

"Nothing changed. Why should I?" Verstappen told told the media in Montreal on Thursday. "It is what it is. I was on eight points before and now it's 11.

"I mean, I cannot just back out of everything. I'm just going to race like I always do. I trust myself," he insisted.

The Red Bull ace was quizzed; he believes his situation was fair, but he insisted he "didn't need to go into" that discussion, adding: "But at the same time, life is not fair. I don't worry about it.

"I just come here to race, and I will always race hard, how I think I should race. And then we go on to the next race.

"Of course, like I said, it was not the right thing to do at the time," the four-time F1 champion went on reflecting on the Barcelona incident. "It was a misjudgment, clearly, in the corner.

"But you don't need to go into full detail of why, how and what. Everyone makes mistakes in life. Everyone learns from them and we just move on.

"It was just a very frustrating few laps in a row. I got driven into on the straight, I almost crashed already with the hard tyres. Then I got driven into in Turn 1.

"Then they tell me that I have to give the place back. I'm like, that makes no sense. So it was a lot of things that just came together.

"Until that point we had a good race," Verstappen pointed out. "We did the right strategy for our car, and we at least put a bit of pressure on McLaren in the race, where they were again very fast compared to everyone else. But, yeah, just a frustrating end."

And when it was pointed out that he will be under the risk of a ban until October, when a big chunk of his penalty points are deleted, Verstappen responded: "I don't think about it."

Verstappen is currently third in the 2025 F1 drivers' championship, 49 points behind leader Piastri. (Reporting by Agnes Carlier)