Verstappen fires back at ex-champ’s ‘amusing’ Hamilton jab

Max Verstappen has fired back at Nico Rosberg’s comments about him realising just “how good” Lewis Hamilton is now he is going up against him so closely.

Hamilton, after slipping to third in the Portuguese Grand Prix on the weekend, pounced on a small error from Verstappen to overtake the Red Bull and then pass his teammate Valtteri Bottas to claim his second win of the season.

And after what Rosberg described as a “phenomenal” race, the 2016 world champion claimed the Dutchman was only now realising what it’s like to race Hamilton so closely every week.

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“I’m a bit amused because Max Verstappen is starting to understand better and better how good Lewis Hamilton is,” he told Sky F1. “He needs to do everything perfect to beat him in the championship and at the moment it’s two-one to Lewis.”

But Verstappen hit back at the comments in his post-race press conference in typical Mad Max style.

“I don’t need Nico to make me realise how good Lewis is,” he said. “I know he’s very good, otherwise you don’t win so many championships.”

Verstappen further praised Hamilton for his clean racing, saying how great it was to be able to “trust” a fellow driver to compete in such close quarters.

“Yeah, it’s been really cool,” said Verstappen. “Especially when you race a driver, when you know that you can go to the absolute limit, I guess you can trust each other to just race super hard.

“I think that’s always really nice because you can see in the three races... it’s been really close to each other but predictable. Lewis has never had something like ‘oh, we’re going to crash’ or something. I always have full trust in Lewis that we all give each other enough space.”