The closing stages of the Japanese GP were made more exciting thanks to a bit of traffic, with first Fernando Alonso and then Felipe Massa holding up the two leaders in the final couple of laps.
Alonso was reprimanded for ignoring blue flags but Massa got away without any penalty because he didn’t really do anything wrong, and it was only a quirk of Suzuka that meant he ended up delaying Verstappen by quite a bit.
But even though Verstappen himself said that the traffic made no difference to the result because Suzuka is such a hard track to pass on, Helmut Marko is still salty about it. He thinks that Massa cost his team a win and that as a result, he should retire.
“Max had the pace to attack Hamilton. It cannot be that when the leaders approach you only move over after so many corners. Without the episode we would have had an exciting end. It would be better if Massa retires.”
What, again?!
Usually it’s Red Bull’s own drivers that have to worry about the wrath of Marko, but lately he’s been going after other people too. After the wet qualifying in Monza was delayed after Romain Grosjean crashed, he said:
“If Grosjean falls off that’s no reason to stop a session because we all know Grosjean falls off quite often.”
Presumably worried about losing Max to another team, Marko also recently said that Toto Wolff “lacks class” because he dared to talk to Jos Verstappen at Suzuka. Oh no, two people talked to each other! Quick, somebody call the police!
