Hungarian Grand Prix: Max Verstappen apologises to Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo after 'amateur' crash

Budapest: Max Verstappen admitted he made a mistake in colliding with Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo on the opening lap of Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix and said he will apologise to the Australian.

The Dutch teenager crashed into Ricciardo’s car at Turn Two where the impact caused damage that ended his race.

The angry Ricciardo said it was the error of an “amateur, to say the least”.

Verstappen told reporters: “It is never my intention to hit anyone, but especially not my team-mate and especially with the relationship I have with Daniel - it’s always really good and we can always have a laugh.

“This is not nice and I apologise to Daniel for that and also to the team because we could have scored some good points here.

“I’ll speak with Daniel in private and we’ll sort it out.”

Ricciardo had suggested immediately after the incident that Verstappen did not like to find himself behind his team-mate and insinuated that the collision was avoidable.

But Verstappen said he could not help it.

“It was, of course, not what you want. Everything started in Turn One. The start was actually quite good, but I got squeezed wide by Bottas and lost quite a lot of speed.

“We were both fighting for position in Turn Two so we braked quite deep into the corner.

“I tried to keep it to the inside, but then I just got locking, locking, and then unfortunately touched Daniel on the weakest point of the car, in the side.

“Of course, I was trying to avoid Daniel, but unfortunately that was not possible.”

Verstappen was given a 10-second penalty by the stewards for causing the accident. He continued the race and finished fifth.

Team boss Christian Horner said: “It was a very frustrating race because we effectively lost Daniel and Max got a penalty in the same move.

“What you never want to see is team-mates touching - Max is aggressive, he is on the limit. He made a mistake today and it was costly for him, for Daniel and for the team.

“In the pre-race meeting we talked about the golden rule – ‘give each other space on turn one and turn two. Has everybody got that?’

“And they gave us the nod and then that happened at turn two.

“Everybody makes mistakes. The important thing is how you respond to them. He has apologised and will go and see his team-mate to apologise to him too.”