Ted Kravitz reflects on tense Max Verstappen interview: “What was I meant to do?”

Ted Kravitz has reflected on his awkward incident with Max Verstappen at the Canadian Grand Prix, admitting, “What was I meant to do?”

Verstappen was unhappy with Kravitz during their pre-weekend interview on Thursday in Montreal.

Kravitz asked about Red Bull’s decision to tell Verstappen to let George Russell back through at the Spanish Grand Prix - a call which was later proved to be incorrect.

Kravitz referred to Red Bull having a different sporting director - Stephen Knowles - as Jonathan Wheatley is now at Sauber as their team principal.

The exchange between Verstappen and Kravitz was tense.

The four-time world champion was annoyed that Knowles was specifically mentioned.

Reflecting on the encounter with Verstappen, Kravitz said that as the Red Bull driver wasn’t in a “receptive mood” regarding the clash with Russell, he decided to talk about something else.

“He wasn’t in a particularly receptive mood about [the George Russell incident], so I thought I’d go with a question about the team mistake that led to that message in error to give the place back to Russell,” Kravitz explained.

“I asked him a question that I thought was going to be on his side and understood his annoyance that set that whole fateful minute and a half off in the first place.

“I said to him, ‘What are you going to be doing to improve the dialogue with your rules man – a guy called Stephen Knowles, who’s taken over from Jonathan Wheatley – to make sure that doesn’t happen again?’.

“Max either misunderstood it by accident or took a rather over-negative interpretation of what I was saying.

“He said, ‘I don’t think it’s fair for you to single somebody out. I would never single somebody out for criticism in the team’.

“What was I meant to do? Was I meant to say an ‘unnamed team representative that deals with the rules’? I said ‘I’m just not here to say it was Stephen Knowles wasn’t it, let’s blame him’.”

“And then he just wouldn’t accept it. He just said, ‘Well, I think it’s not nice of you to do that’, at which point we ended the interview.”

It’s not the first time Kravitz and Verstappen haven’t seen eye to eye.

Verstappen and Red Bull were unhappy with Kravitz’s comments in late 2022 regarding his title win over Lewis Hamilton in 2021.

As a result, Red Bull refused to speak to Sky during the 2022 Mexico City Grand Prix weekend.