Max Verstappen shows true colours as he points finger after Lewis Hamilton Monaco GP clash

Max Verstappen absolved rival of blame for their scary near miss at the . It happened in qualifying as started his final flying lap, but had to abort within seconds when he came across the slow-moving on track.

The racer took evasive action and swore over the radio, venting his frustration. And Hamilton was not happy either, lambasting his race engineer for giving him mixed information about how quickly Verstappen was approaching him from behind.

The incident placed Hamilton at risk of a post-session penalty with the stewards summoning both drivers to explain themselves. But speaking before that hearing, Verstappen made it clear that he did not blame Hamilton for the incident – just his team.

"At the time, you see the car blocking you when you are very high speed, it's not nice," he said, explaining why he had yelled "f*** Lewis" in the seconds after the near-miss. "I saw immediately that the team told him that I was on a slow lap while I was clearly driving fast, so it's not Lewis' fault.

Sign up to our free weekly F1 newsletter, Pit Lane Chronicle, by entering your email address below so that every new edition lands straight in your inbox!

"I've chatted to Lewis about it already. It's very simple, but it can't happen. That's the team's mistake. If you look at the history of things, yes [I expect Hamilton to get a penalty]. It's more the team's fault, but unfortunately in qualifying they are normally quite strict on these things."

Verstappen was fifth fastest on the road, one place behind Hamilton by the end of qualifying. was the man who took pole position, denying home hero at the last with a lap good enough to break the course record.

READ MORE:

READ MORE:

Verstappen, though, says he knew pretty early on in qualifying that he was not going to have the pace in the car that he needed to challenge at the sharp end. "On all the low-speed mechanical grip corners, we just didn't have it," he conceded.

"I couldn't find more lap time compared to practice, really, and yeah, every time I had to ride a kerb or drop a wheel in a cambered corner, it didn't grip up and that has been our issue. As soon as I went out in qualifying and I saw the lap time progression, I knew that we were not in that fight.

"I know that our car is not very good at low speed anyway, and I think this year in qualifying it has been very close between a lot of cars. If, naturally, you are lacking a bit of feeling and balance in those low-speed corners, then it's not happening."

And Red Bull have their other car even lower down the order after failed to make it through to Q3. The Japanese racer is set to line up 12th on the grid for Sunday's race.