Formula 1 world championship leader Max Verstappen says he understands why the FIA will not allow repeats of his burnout victory celebration at the Styrian Grand Prix even though he thought it was funny and safe.
Verstappen dominated the Styrian GP, held at Red Bull’s home track, and as he crossed the line he slowed down in front of his cheering team members on the pitwall and performed a lengthy burnout.
He didn’t come to a complete stop before doing so but FIA race director Michael Masi immediately told Red Bull it would not be tolerated in the future.
The race-winning driver is allowed to complete an “act of celebration” as long as it is “performed safely and does not endanger other drivers or any officials”, “does not call into question the legality of his car” and “does not delay the podium ceremony”.
As Verstappen’s burnout clearly did not contravene the second or third conditions, the FIA is likely to have believed it was unsafe and presented a risk of being hit by another car.
“I’ll try to do a doughnut next time,” Verstappen joked on Thursday ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix.
“I understand of course about safety. But I looked in my mirrors, went all the way to the right, took it easy. Everyone was on the left. I just did a burnout.
“OK, if it’s not allowed, I won’t do it again. At the time I thought it was really funny and safe.
“But of course I understand that they don’t want to see this happen again, which is fine for me.”
The nearest car was Nicholas Latifi’s Williams, which was three seconds behind and crossed the line at speed with Verstappen pulling away again on the right-hand side.
Latifi was actually involved in a bizarre post-race crash after the finish line at the same circuit in 2015 in Formula Renault 3.5.
In that incident he crossed the finish line close to the pitwall after defending his fifth position from Tom Dillmann exiting the final corner, and Latifi then slammed into Roberto Merhi – who had slowed significantly after crossing the line fourth on the road.
“When I was coming to the finish line, I saw Max pulling to the inside to celebrate with the team like most drivers do so I just made sure to stay as far to the left as possible,” said Latifi.
“I guess just as a rule of thumb it’s probably not the best thing to really slow down that much.
“Obviously, in that situation there were no cars directly behind him that were racing and obviously that was the situation, all those years ago in 2015.
“I was racing with another car quite close and as a result had my eye [on the car behind and did not] expect a car to be right in front of me on the grid.
“So it can end very badly as we saw back in 2015. There just has to be a bit of a compromise in that sense.
“It was dangerous so I don’t think a lot of other cars will be doing that in the future. It is probably best to not slow down that much.”
