Max Verstappen blames Lewis Hamilton for costly Miami Sprint time loss

Max Verstappen pointed the finger at Lewis Hamilton for costing him “four seconds” during the Miami Grand Prix Sprint.

The pair lost time after Verstappen relinquished position to Hamilton after an off-track overtake, the Ferrari driver initially unwilling to pass when the Red Bull driver moved aside at Turn 17.

Max Verstappen blames Lewis Hamilton for Miami Sprint time loss

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Having gone wheel-to-wheel at the start, Verstappen came back for another attack on Hamilton during the Miami Sprint.

The Red Bull driver launched an overtake attempt into Turn 11, as both he and Hamilton took to the run-off.

Verstappen returned to the track ahead, so having made the pass off the circuit, yielded to return P6 to Hamilton.

Verstappen did re-pass Hamilton on the next lap, before pulling away from the Ferrari.

However, the Dutchman was not best pleased with how that process played out.

“I had to let him by, but he doesn’t come by,” Verstappen said of Hamilton on Sky F1.

“So we lose four seconds because he just stays behind me.

“That’s where we wasted our time.

“I don’t know what else I could have done there, so that’s a bit of a shame.

“But after that, I think once I was in clean air, the pace was actually quite okay.

“So a lot of things that I think we have to work on, because generally, the car is jumping a lot, which is costing me quite a lot of grip.”

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Hamilton finished the 19-lap Sprint eight seconds back from Verstappen, and afterwards told Sky F1 of persisting software issues.

Hamilton called for setup changes to his Ferrari SF-26 ahead of qualifying.

“I’m hoping that we can change a lot,” said Hamilton looking ahead to qualifying.

“Yesterday I lost three tenths just because the software wasn’t working properly. So driving the same, but losing down the straights.

“In the [Sprint] race, it seems that that continued from qualifying.

“So I think they’re going to have to do some software changes or something to make sure that doesn’t happen going into qualifying, and hopefully we’ll have slightly better deployment.

“The setup is in the wrong place. So definitely, we’ll make some big changes going into qualifying.”

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