Max Verstappen hits back at Mercedes’ Toto Wolff for dismissing his Formula One record

SINGAPORE (AP) — Max Verstappen hit back Thursday at Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff’s dismissal of his Formula One record for consecutive wins and suggested his rivals might do higher to attract inspiration from his achievements.

After Verstappen became the primary F1 driver to realize 10 wins in a row at the last race in Italy, Wolff said the mark was “for Wikipedia” and “not something that may be necessary for me.”

Speaking ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, Verstappen said Wolff’s comments stemmed from anger at poor results for Mercedes in Italy and described the team’s race with an expletive. Mercedes had George Russell in fifth and Lewis Hamilton in sixth in Monza as they did not get near the Red Bull and Ferrari cars fighting for the rostrum places.

Verstappen said rivals could draw inspiration from Red Bull’s dominance as an alternative.

“I believe it’s just necessary that you just concentrate on your personal team. That’s what we do as well. That’s what we did previously as well after we were behind them and after they were dominating,” Verstappen said.

“And I believe you need to have the option to understand when a team is doing rather well, which I believe we’ve done previously, since it worked also as a type of inspiration to see someone that dominant who was very impressive at the time. And we knew that we just needed to work harder, attempt to be higher and check out to get to that level. And now that we’re there, we’re very blissful after all that we’re there and we’re having fun with the moment and truthfully, that’s all I can say about it.”

Together with the Qatar Grand Prix and the brand new race in Las Vegas, Singapore is certainly one of only three circuits on the 2023 calendar where Verstappen has yet to win. Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez took the victory last yr.