Red Bull made cheeky FIA request to protect Max Verstappen as

Christian Horner has revealed that Red Bullapproached the FIA ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix to keep them savvy to ‘gamesmanship’ involving Max Verstappen. The Dutchman went into the weekend one penalty point away from a one-race suspension. This was something that other drivers considered exploiting.



And as we said, if you do keep driving like that, you’ll accumulate your points and you’ll get punished. Ultimately, he got punished for it. So, from my side, kind of long may it continue and for a neutral, it spices things up a little bit.”

don’t think there was any surprises with that. I think that it’s inevitable that there was going to be some potential gamesmanship. It’s something that we raised after the drivers’ briefing with the race director, just so that they were mindful of it as well, because it’s clear that kind of stuff goes on.

Verstappen and Russell will likely face another tense battle in Austria next time out. The Red Bulland Mercedes racers are separated by just 19 points in the Drivers’ Championship standings, and the Brit will be desperate to prove his worth relative to the reigning world champion, given the longstanding speculation about his future at Brackley.