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Max Verstappen did not speak with Sky Sports after qualifying on Saturday, and now according to multiple reports, Red Bull—including team boss Christian Horner—will not speak with the U.K. network at the Mexico City Grand Prix on Sunday.
While the boycott is said to be “indefinite,” Racer reports “it will be reviewed ahead of the next race in Brazil.”
The move, originally reported by Dutch Newspaper De Telegraaf, comes after Sky Sports pundit Ted Kravitz’s comments in his “Ted’s Notebook” show following the U.S. Grand Prix. He was discussing Brad Pitt being in the paddock while planning for the upcoming Formula One film, and Kravitz discussed how the U.S. race provided an interesting script in the context of the 2021 title fight, adding that Lewis Hamilton was “robbed” of the championship.
The 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix had a controversial finish after a safety car period, which the FIA later investigated and found the former race director committed a “human error” when incorrectly applying the restart procedures. In a mad-dash last lap, Verstappen passed Hamilton to take his first world title.
“Today’s script…” Kravitz said in Austin. “Seven-time world champion goes into final race trying to be greatest of all time and win [the] championship, gets robbed, comes back, his next year’s car is rubbish—in the movie sense—doesn’t win a race all year and then finally comes back to a track where he could win a race, is battling with the same guy who won the race that he was robbed in the previous year, and manages to finish ahead of him. What a script and a story that would’ve been. So Brad, if you’re listening, that’s not a bad one.
“But that’s not the way the script turned out today, was it? Because the guy that beat him, after being robbed—the seven-time world champion—actually overtook him because he’s got a quicker car, because of engineering and Formula One and design and pretty much because of [Adrian Newey, Red Bull's lead car designer].
“So the romanticism of the movie that may or may not be with Lewis Hamilton and Brad Pitt wasn’t actually today. It would have been had Lewis Hamilton won but he didn’t, it was Max Verstappen, and with it, we should celebrate Red Bull winning their fifth world constructors’ championship.”
According to ESPN, Verstappen plans to also not speak with Sky Sports Italia and Sky Sports Germany.
