Turn 4 at the Hungaroring has a way of inviting trouble. On Sunday it invited the stewards, too.
Max Verstappen’s pass on Lewis Hamilton into the fast, blind left-hander sent the Ferrari driver skating through the escape road and straight into a post-race summons. Both were called for “forcing another driver off the track,” though from trackside it looked like one of those elbows-out moments that lives in the grey.
Grey turned murkier when the replays didn’t help. Steven Knowles, Red Bull’s acting head of sporting, fronted the room alongside Verstappen and later explained why the investigation took as long as it did.
“It was an interesting one,” he said on the Inside Track podcast. “You don’t usually see overtakes there, and the angles were… unhelpful. Max’s onboard switched to a front-wing cam at exactly the wrong time, and the heli shot put the cars behind the trees. No one was entirely sure what happened.”
With no obvious contact and no crystal-clear footage, Race Control kicked it upstairs. The stewards’ options were the usual pair: causing a collision, or forcing a rival off. In the end, they chose neither, and Hamilton chose not to attend. The FIA confirmed he’d waived his right to a review, without elaborating why.
Did Hamilton’s absence swing it? Knowles wouldn’t bite. “It probably shouldn’t make much of a difference,” he said. “The stewards are driven by the facts. But in a 50/50 case, if a driver feels strongly and is in there making the case, I’m sure that can be a factor. Would it have changed this one? Not sure.”
Knowles is new to the public-facing side of this job, picking up a chunk of Red Bull’s regulatory brief after Jonathan Wheatley moved on to run Sauber. The learning curve’s been steep and, at times, oddly comic.
“You walk in and drivers have just got out of the car, adrenaline’s high, emotions are high,” he said. “You adapt how you make your points. Then you get the other end of the spectrum — ‘Towelgate’. Max had a towel in his car and everyone was laughing before we even walked into the room. It really depends on the situation.”
As for Hungary, the verdict reflected what the pictures didn’t show: enough commitment to make the move, not enough evidence to punish it. Turn 4 giveth, Turn 4 taketh away; this time the stewards let it race.
