Red Bull issued a warning from the steward for releasing the car in an unsafe condition as Max Verstappen had to throw a towel from his cockpit while on track during FP2 at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Verstappen has taken a photo of him moving inside the track in the first sector, throwing a towel towards the grass rim, and lying on the circuit for part of the second session. Dutchman explained that he chose not to leave the towel in the cockpit in the case he gets caught in the pedal, explaining that the steward understands his reason for throwing it away.
“It’s a towel that usually just wipes your face when you come back, so when it went outside it was still in the car,” Verstappen said. “So instead of that, I drove offline, a dangerous part, rather than flying between my legs, and I removed it in the safest way possible. I think the stewards understand that.”
The steward gave Red Bull a warning due to the fact that he left the garage with a towel in the cockpit in the first place.
“It was observed that the driver of Car 1 threw a towel from the cockpit shortly after Car 1 was released from the garage,” Steward’s decision read. “The driver explained that while he was in the garage, a facial towel had slipped from his knees to the side of his seat, and the team had no idea that it was still in the cockpit.
“The Steward determines that the towel may remain in the footwell and interfere with the driver’s ability to fully control the car, and therefore the car has been released in an unsafe condition.
This incident was part of FP2, which was difficult for Verstappen. He ended up at 14th on the timing screen, finishing in 14th, due to Lando Norris’ key time and 0.3 seconds behind his teammate Yuki Tunoda.
“Yeah, it was really tough today. It just feels really low in grip. It’s not the balance of the car,” he said. “It’s hard to say what an exact problem is. In fact, nothing worked. So this is something we’ve had to investigate overnight, as it’s not a weekend so far.
“We’re sure we can do better, but today was a very bad thing. So we need to first really understand where it is and what’s having a big problem with the car. I mean, McLaren is really flying.
