BUDAPEST, Hungary — Max Verstappen confirmed he raced with blurred vision in some races after his infamous crash at the 2021 British Grand Prix.
Verstappen hit the wall at 180mph after colliding with title rival Lewis Hamilton, a major flashpoint in their legendary championship battle that year.
The impact was recorded at 51 G-forces and sent the driver to hospital for precautionary checks.
Last week in the Red Bulletin, Verstappen said he felt the after-effects at subsequent races. The quote was in an article where he listed his 10 best drives so far.
In the entry for the 2021 U.S. Grand Prix, several months after the Silverstone incident, he was quoted as saying: “Since my Silverstone crash, I’ve struggled with visibility problems, especially on undulating circuits or those with lots of advertising boards on the side of the track. In this race, I wasn’t just fighting against Lewis, but also against blurred images.
“It was like driving a speedboat at 300kph. I’ve never said this before, but it was so bad for a few laps that I seriously considered turning the car off. The only thing that helped was to concentrate on my breathing with Lewis breathing down my neck. An important win that I desperately needed in the championship fight.”
After being widely circulated on social media, the quote was removed. Red Bull said it had been poorly translated into English. It was not an admission Verstappen had made before. During media day for this Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix the three-time world champion confirmed the quote, but clarified that he no longer suffers from the issue now.
“It was just in ’21. After that it went away. It did occur, back then,” Verstappen said on Thursday at the Hungaroring.
When asked by ESPN if it was caused by the incident at Silverstone, he replied: “It didn’t happen before, let’s say it like that.” Verstappen downplayed how impactful it was. “It’s not something I would advise for people to have while driving,” he said.
“We are racing drivers. You deal with all sorts of stuff. Always here and there people have like little injuries or whatever. Those things happen.” Verstappen confirmed he worked with a specialist to tackle the issue but did not elaborate further.
“We did, yeah. It got cured, luckily. I don’t want to go into details, no one needs to know [the details].”