Jos Verstappen couldn't help but mock Ferrari for the strategy disasters that have left his son on the brink of back-to-back world titles.
Red Bull themselves, the retired Formula 1 racer admitted, are capable of howlers of their own. But there was no mistake from his son's team as they took advantage of Ferrari's woes to win the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen was relatively unchallenged despite starting the race 10th. Charles Leclerc might have been able to compete for the win, but he was hampered by the hard tyres his team placed him on mid-way through the race, and from there he never recovered.
"Red Bull's decisions are not always good, it's true," said Jos, per Motorsport.com. "But they make fewer mistakes than Ferrari, that's why Max has an 80-point lead over Leclerc."
Quoted by the official Verstappen website, he later added: "I don't need to tell him anything. He did a fantastic job. The good thing is that he understands himself. I think the strategy was good. He started on the right tyres and stopped at the right moments.
"He passed everyone easily, like he always does. I think we had a good race car. We could already see that in qualifying. I'm a proud dad, I always am."
Leclerc was frustrated after the race in Budapest, and could not understand why he was forced to put on the hard tyres. "For some reason, I don't know why, we went on the hards," he told Sky Sports. "I said on the radio I was very comfortable with the medium and that I wanted to go as long as possible with those tyres because the feeling was good – I don't know why we took a different decision."
Former Ferrari driver Felipe Massa was not pleased to see Leclerc speaking so coarsely of the team in public, and called upon the Monegasque to better hide his frustrations. "Well, definitely, he’s not happy at all," said the Brazilian. "But you need to be patient because if you start a fight now, it will not help the team.
"Charles, we cannot forget, in the last race, he made a mistake that just gave away a very good possibility to win the race and score the right amount of points. So you need to be patient.
"So, even if you're not happy with the decisions, the mistakes that are happening, you need to fight in the right way, professionally. Not showing it outside because, if you start to show outside, it is not helping both sides, even if Ferrari made more mistakes this year. A fight outside will not help them."
