Max Verstappen: ‘I don’t give a s**t about Lando Norris collision criticism’

World Championship leader Max Verstappen.

Max Verstappen said he does not “give a s**t” about criticism as he spoke following his crash with Lando Norris in Austria.

The Dutchman was in the crosshairs of many after he came together with Norris in Austria, sending both out of contention for the win and the McLaren man out of the race entirely, but Verstappen said he does not care about anyone else’s opinion.

Max Verstappen reacts to Lando Norris Austria collision criticism

There were cries of the “old Max Verstappen” come the chequered flag in Spielberg after the Dutchman hit Norris as the two attacked Turn 3 and in the heat of the moment, Norris said he would lose a lot of respect for Verstappen if he did not apologise.

Norris has since backtracked and said the two had patched things up but Verstappen said he did not care about the criticism that came his way in the aftermath of the race.

“I don’t give a s**t about that,” he told reporters at Silverstone when asked by PlanetF1.com if he deserved to be criticised after the race. “I go home, I live my life.

“For me, the only thing that I care about is maintaining my relationship with Lando because we are great friends.

“After the race, I said we have to just let things cool down because emotions run high and we immediately spoke on Monday and I think we came to the conclusion that we actually really enjoyed our battle.

“But we both looked at the incident and it was such a silly little touch that had great consequences for both of us. Naturally a bit more for Lando with how the puncture then evolved.

“But we like to race hard, we’ve done this for many years, not only in Formula 1, even online racing, but we had a lot of fun together.

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“These things have to carry on because that’s what we like to do and I think it’s great for Formula 1 as well.”

Earlier in the day, Norris said he does not believe Verstappen needed to apologise for what the Briton called a “pretty pathetic incident.”

“It was tough,” he said. “It was a pretty pathetic incident in terms of what ended both our races.

“It wasn’t like a hit, it wasn’t like an obvious bit of contact, it was the probably one of the smallest bits of contact you could have but with a pretty terrible consequence for both of us, especially for myself.

“So yeah, he doesn’t need to. I don’t expect an apology from him. I don’t think he should apologise.

“I thought as a review it was good racing, at times close to the edge. But as I said, we’ve spoken about it and we are both happy to go racing again.”

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