Verstappen: I will bear no disrespect for me

Ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix, Max Verstappen’s decision, as well as the entire Red Bull Racing team, to boycott Britain’s Sky Sports F1 and refuse to communicate with its journalists was announced. In addition, this also applies to other European TV channels that are part of the Sky system and broadcast to the German and Italian public.

The Dutch press, commenting on the two-time world champion’s decision, noted that this was his reaction to the words of Ted Kravitz, a very popular Sky Sports reporter, on the days of the US race weekend, who said that last year Lewis Hamilton was “deprived of the title.”

At the start of the Mexican weekend at Red Bull Racing there was no comment on this, but after the finish of the race, which ended in another victory for Max, among other questions asked of him, there was a request for explanation about this unprecedented decision.

“It has nothing to do with a specific weekend, it’s about the whole year,” Verstappen replied. – Continues this digging, constant manifestations of disrespect, especially from one specific person. At some point I decided it was enough for me, I’m not going to take it.

You can’t live in the past, you have to move forward. Social media is already a very toxic place, and if you constantly act like this on TV, it turns out you’re only making the situation worse instead of trying to make it better.

If someone constantly shows contempt for me, I won’t tolerate it any longer, so I’ve decided not to give an interview.”

In addition, during a Christian Horner press conference on Friday about financial rule violations and sanctions against Red Bull Racing, another Sky Sports journalist posed an unpleasant question to the head of the team, asking if he would apologise. . to the fans and to the entire Formula 1.

Horner did not like this and as a result the entire Red Bull Racing team joined the boycott. But he emphasized that the action is a one-off.

“Some comments were disrespectful, so in Mexico we decided not to communicate with Sky,” he said. – Max was angry, we were angry too, so we decided to act together, as a whole team. This won’t harm the TV station, but we’ve decided to give them some sort of warning.

Some of their comments are correct, but some are made for false sensationalism, and if they say we stole the championship from someone, as was said in Austin, this is already too much. This is not a fair, impartial or balanced approach. We have made our warning and next time we will return to the usual way of working.”