Red Bull’s Max Verstappen apologises for turning the air blue

Max Verstappen has issued an apology for his expletive-laden outburst during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Dutchman swore repeatedly in a broadcasted radio transmission after his Red Bull car broke down following an engine failure.

Told by his team to stop, a furious Verstappen yelled: “Can I not just keep going? I don’t care if this f****** engine blows up. What a f****** joke all the f****** time. Honestly.”

“However, I should not have used the words I did in the heat of the moment. Emotions were running high after a good start to the race.”

Verstappen’s failure followed only a week after team-mate Daniel Ricciardo retired in Germany with an engine problem.

Verstappen added: “These frustrations came for a reason after another unexpected engine failure which have been happening too often in the past few years.

“We came to Budapest with high expectations and not being able to be competitive made it hard to swallow.”

Red Bull’s engine supplier Renault powered the Milton Keynes team to four consecutive driver and team championships between 2010 and 2013, but their relationship has drastically deteriorated in recent years.

Ahead of the French Grand Prix in June, Red Bull announced that they will be terminating their partnership with Renault to change to Honda engines next year.

Boss Christian Horner described Verstappen’s retirement as “no surprise” before accusing Renault of providing his team with a below-par engine.

He said: “We pay multi-millions of pounds for these engines and for first class, or state-of-the-art products, and you can see it’s quite clearly some way below that.

“I’ll let Cyril [Abiteboul, Renault’s team boss] come up with the excuses afterwards.”