"It’s part of the game": Former world champion on Max Verstappen's criticism of the F1 Las Vegas GP

Former world champion Nico Rosberg has weighed in on Max Verstappen's complaints about the F1 Las Vegas GP and said that it is all part of the game. The inaugural race in Vegas attracted a lot of criticism before the main race on Sunday. There were legitimate safety concerns after the incident in FP1.

In FP1 on Friday, Carlos Sainz's Ferrari suffered extensive damage when a manhole cover came loose. Max Verstappen himself was very vocal against the race. He had called the event '99% show and 1% sporting' amongst other things even though his tone changed after the race on Sunday.

Nico Rosberg has now said that while he understood Max Verstappen's comments, it's all part of the game after all. In an interview with the Daily Mail, he explained that drivers just love to drive the car and make it through the rest of the things.

He said:

“What we like to do is just drive the race car. And of course, in our job at F1, there is so much that we have to do also around the actual driving the race car. Driving the race car is actually like the smallest part of what we do and especially all the media work and all the work with the sponsors."

He added:

“In Vegas, there’s so much sponsor work that a driver needs to do, going from one dinner appearance to the next, one activation to the next. And we drivers, that’s like the part that we least like about our job. We always want to try and minimize that because it also can negatively impact our performance on the racetrack if we get to the actual driving and are tired or something, or not concentrated."

In the end, Rosberg stressed that all these commitments are, however, part of the game because that's where the salary comes from. He said:

“But it’s part of the game, isn’t it? And we earn a great amount of money as well. And it’s thanks to the sponsors, thanks to the fans. So we just always have to accept that we need to dedicate some time to give back to sponsors and give back to fans because they’re the ones who pay our salaries.”

Max Verstappen's complaints about the F1 Las Vegas GP

Max Verstappen made quite a few comments throughout the weekend. He wasn't a fan of the pre-race show that consisted of driver announcements. The Dutchman wasn't too big a fan of the track either after completing qualifying. He also had an impassioned speech during the pre-race press conference.

The driver talked about how when he was growing up, F1 was about passion and emotion. There's so much that goes into making these teams and cars excel in the sport but people don't view a race weekend as such. Max Verstappen did, however, change his tone a little after the race, which was very competitive between him and Charles Leclerc.