Max Verstappen greets F1 stewards after being penalized by F1 stewards at the Las Vegas Grand Prix

At the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Max Verstappen loses the lead after making an awkward maneuver against Charles Leclerc in the first corner for which he was penalized by F1 stewards. I stood there.

David Croft and Martin Brundle agreed that Max Verstappen’s penalty for illegally passing Charles Leclerc at the start of the Las Vegas Grand Prix was “light”.

The Red Bull star started the race in second place, with Leclerc taking pole position. However, it was Verstappen who got off to a good start, despite being on the dirty side of the grid due to a pre-race oil spill.

Entering the first corner, he was alongside Leclerc. However, Verstappen entered the corner at a steep angle and went wide, causing the Ferrari to follow him to avoid an accident.

Leclerc was furious, but Red Bull told the driver not to give him back the position. They were confident Verstappen was ahead before going off track, but the stewards did not seem to think so.

After thinking about the situation for a while, they gave the Dutchman a 5 second time penalty. He was informed of this by race engineer Giampiero Lambiase, who seemed unimpressed by the penalty.

“You have been given a five second penalty for that incident, but you’re already two seconds ahead of behind. So be careful until the pit stop,” he told the drivers.

And Verstappen was not impressed with that answer either. “Yeah, that’s fine. Please say hello,” he said jokingly. Both Sky Sports commentator Croft and his colleague Brundle felt the Red Bull racer got off lightly.

“We gave Verstappen a five-second time penalty for pushing another driver off the track,” Brundle said. “In a way, I think that position should be given back, because at five seconds he already had a two-second lead and could control the shape of the race there.

Although he later described the punishment as “half punishment,” Croft suggests that the punishment may be lenient. Agreed that it looks like. “This is a superficial comment from Max Verstappen and a totally worthless penalty considering Verstappen could have been five seconds ahead of him at that pit stop,” he said. “He has the advantage of being in the lead because he did something that the stewards said he shouldn’t have done, but there’s actually no penalty against him.” Something about that… I don’t think it’s a penalty.”

However, Verstappen was not as clear as he would have liked in his first pit stop. He had problems with tires and was constantly being caught. When given the signal to change rubber, Leclerc overtook him on track before reaching the pit lane and put up a good fight for victory.