Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz was clearly uncomfortable after he was awkwardly shut down by Max Verstappen's race engineer.
Red Bull star Max Verstappen took a massive stride in his hopes of retaining the Formula One Drivers' Championship title on Sunday as he picked up an unlikely victory in the Qatar Grand Prix.
The Dutchman is now just 12 points behind championship leader Lando Norris, meaning he can win the 2025 title if he claims P1 in the final race of the season while Norris fails to get a podium.
After the race, Sky Sports reporter Kravitz quickly ran down to the Red Bull garage to see if he could speak with some of the team about the big win and how it could impact the season.
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But while doing so, he was involved in an awkward exchange with Verstappen's race engineer who essentially ignored all of the Sky Sports reporter's questions.
Ever since Verstappen earned a promotion to to Red Bull Racing at the beginning of the 2016 season he has worked alongside race engineer 'GP' Gianpiero Lambiase.
Their first Grand Prix as a driver-engineer duo was the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, a race which Verstappen won, and the pair enjoy a close relationship.
Therefore, GP was the perfect man for Kravitz to speak to following Verstappen's victory in Qatar Grand Prix, but things didn't go exactly to plan.
Kravitz started the interview by congratulating GP on the race win, to which the Italian-British engineer thanked him, but after that he remained frosty with the Sky Sports reporter.
Most of Kravitz questions were met with blunt, short answers, with GP briefly opening up when asked how he felt about remaining in the title race going into the final race in Abu Dhabi.
"It's exciting. To be honest we were not expecting it, but we'll take it," admitted Lambiase.
But when asked about the team's decision to change Verstappen's power unit to an older one ahead of the race, GP paused before telling Kravitz to instead ask chief engineer Paul Monaghan, known in the garage as 'Pedals'.
The awkward moment could perhaps be a reaction to Verstappen and his team's tense relationship with Sky Sports following his maiden title win in 2021.
A controversial decision made by race director Michael Masi at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix saw Verstappen win the race, and the title, while Lewis Hamilton missed out on a record-breaking eighth title.
During a post-session segment on Sky F1 during the 2022 season, Kravitz spoke about the moment and claimed that Hamilton had been “robbed” of the title.
Afterwards, Verstappen decided to boycott the broadcaster for the Mexico City Grand Prix, but Kravitz later insisted that it had all been a simple misunderstanding
"I think the misunderstanding was that elements within Red Bull felt that I was saying that they had done something wrong, which of course they did nothing wrong," Kravitz told The Telegraph.
"Max drove brilliantly, won the race on fresh tyres and deserved the championship.
“I didn’t really understand where it had come from, because at no point did I say that it was anything that Red Bull had done.”
Topics: Formula 1, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Sky Sports
Ben McCrum