"I f**ked up": When Max Verstappen recollected his most embarrassing moment in F1

In 2020, Max Verstappen recollected an embarrassing pit stop moment during the 2016 United States Grand Prix, when he went into the pit lane without his team calling him in. He explained how he mistakenly thought that his engineer was asking him to box while he had just asked him to start pushing more.

In 2016, a 19-year-old Max Verstappen was promoted to the senior Red Bull team five races into the season, after having had been in F1 for only just over a year. He went on to claim his first career victory in his very first race for the team at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, announcing himself on the big stage.

However, later on during the season, in Austin, the young star had a hilarious moment due to a misunderstanding with his race engineer. Speaking to fellow racing driver Antonio Felix da Costa in an interview in 2020, Verstappen explained exactly what happened.

He was asked by da Costa to share his most embarrassing moment in his career, and the Dutchman quickly recollected his incident at the 2016 United States Grand Prix. The Dutchman explained that he was driving a good race, while sitting in fifth position, but then a misunderstanding on his part led to him stopping to pit, when the team did not even call him in.

"My engineer said 'push now, push now' and that normally meant back then that lap you're pitting, I knew that I had to speed up. The second to last corner [in Austin], the fast left turn, I went in, all good and then I just drove to the pit lane, into the pit entry and I realised, 'he never called me in', he didn't tell me to pit. And I was like 'oh my god what did I just do,'" explained Verstappen.

"I'm in the pit and I'm like, 'guys I'm pitting, I'm pitting. And suddenly you see all the guys running out, they were taking like taking random tires and of course the pit stop was like 8-9 seconds. After the race, Helmut [Marko] was pretty angry at me and I just said 'yeah I f**ked up', I thought he called me in," he added.

Max Verstappen shared that he had a mechanical problem with the car just a few laps after this incident and ended up retiring the car. The Dutchman explained how he simply could not explain to the team after the race why he made the mistake, having made the hilarious error.

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F1 Journalist David Tremayne recalled Max Verstappen's first career win in 2016

Max Verstappen at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, 2016 - Source: Getty

F1 Hall of Fame journalist David Tremayne recalled Max Verstappen's historic first career win at Barcelona in 2016, in a piece he wrote for F1 in 2024. He called it a historic day for F1, the Netherlands and the Verstappen family.

Max Verstappen took even his most loyal supporters by surprise as he claimed a victory in the first chance he got to drive a competitive car. He held off Ferrari pair Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel to become the youngest ever driver to claim a victory in the sport.

Tremayne explained that the F1 paddock had high hopes for the youngster, ever since his debut season in 2015, and after a strong performance in practice and qualifying, it was clear that the young Dutchman will be a competitive driver.

"We already knew he [Verstappen] was something special, but the moment he got his hands on a really competitive car the youngest driver on the grid left no-one in any doubt that he would be a contender," Verstappen said [via Formula1.com]

Tremayne also went on to explain that with his record-breaking first win, Max Verstappen quickly proved even his harshest critics wrong, and that he had belonged in the big league from day 1.

"The fact is that, despite criticism from the likes of 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve when he first appeared in the F1 paddock in 2014 prior to his debut in 2015, Max had always belonged. And now he had proved it emphatically to even his harshest critics."

Verstappen has not moved away from his Red Bull team since that switch back in 2016, and in 2021 became only the second driver for the team to claim a Drivers' World Championship. He has now gone on to claim three more drivers' titles and two constructors' titles with the team from Austria.