The four-time F1 world champion appeared to deliberately drive into Russell's Mercedes during the closing stages of Sunday's (01.06.25) race in Barcelona and has now taken to social media to state the incident stemmed from "frustration" after he missed out on a place on the podium after a late safety car scuppered his strategy.

Verstappen posted on Instagram: "We had an exciting strategy and good race in Barcelona, till the safety car came out.

"Our tyre choice to the end and some moves after the safety car restart fuelled my frustration, leading to a move that was not right and shouldn't have happened.

"I always give everything out there for the team and emotions can run high. You win some together, you lose some together."

The Red Bull driver was handed a 10-second time penalty for the incident, which demoted him from fifth to 10th in the final classification for the race.

Verstappen was also handed three penalty points on his licence for the collision and is only one short of having to serve a race ban.

Russell claimed that the Dutch driver had "let himself down" with his actions and pointed out that it isn't the first time Verstappen's temper has clouded his judgement in the car.

He said: "Totally unnecessary and sort of lets him down. I don't know what he was thinking.

"It doesn't really make sense to deliberately crash into somebody and risk damaging your own car, risk a penalty.

"In the end, I'm not going to lose sleep over it because I ultimately benefited from those antics."

The racer added: "You cannot deliberately crash into another driver. You know, we're putting our lives on the line. We're fortunate the cars are as safe as they are these days. But we shouldn't take it for granted.

"It's down to the stewards to determine if it's deliberate or not. If they do think it's deliberate, then they need to have a hard precedent.

"Max is such an amazing driver and so many people look up to him. It's a shame that something like that continues to occur."