Red Bull left it as late as possible to tell Verstappen about his latest penalty · RaceFans

Red Bull appeared to anticipate Max Verstappen’s displeased reaction to his penalty during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and chose a different approach to letting him know about his latest sanction.

Verstappen picked up his fifth penalty for a driving infringement in the last five rounds during Sunday’s race after he knocked Oscar Piastri into a spin immediately after the start at turn one. The stewards ruled on the incident quickly and handed Verstappen a 10-second time penalty on lap five.

Previously, Red Bull haven’t wasted time in keeping Verstappen up to date on any stewards decisions that affect his race, passing on the news as soon as they receive it. But yesterday Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase decided to wait until halfway through the race before letting him know.

Rather than inform Verstappen of his penalty as soon as it was issued, Red Bull chose to tell him immediately before he had to serve it, when he came in for his pit stop. Doing so reduced the amount of time Verstappen had to dwell on his penalty before serving it, though he probably expected to be penalised, and did not ask whether the incident was under investigation:

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Lambiase left it until the last possible moment before telling Verstappen, waiting until he was driving down the pit lane towards his team. He left them in no doubt about his view of the decision, sarcastically asking if they could have a 20-second penalty, as he did in Mexico for a pair of incidents:

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Verstappen appeared to be treading on thin ice with his reaction. At the previous race last year his team mate Sergio Perez was given an official warning for his reaction to a penalty (which, coincidentally, also involved a McLaren driver).

Perez told his team “the stewards are a joke” after he was given a five-second time penalty. He was penalised as the stewards reminded him: “comments that amount to personal insults are a breach of the International Sporting Code.” Verstappen likely avoided trouble by not naming who he was referring to.

Despite a subdued final race of the season, Verstappen took time to thank his team as he returned to the pits at the end of the race.

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