Red Bull dismissed the suggestion that Max Verstappen's angry outbursts at the Hungarian Grand Prix were because he was gaming until 3 a.m on Sunday as "rubbish."
Verstappen engaged in a fiery back-and-forth with Red Bull over his radio during Sunday's race.
Afterwards, he said that anyone who felt he had been disrespectful to his team to "f--- off."
Verstappen is an avid gamer and has made a habit during race weekends of taking part in endurance sim races overnight, something he did again between qualifying and the race in Hungary -- posts on X showed he had been up until 3 a.m, 12 hours before the race started.
The amount of sleep the world champion had before the race was a talking point on Sky Sports during the grand prix, but Red Bull said it was not fair to link the two.
"He was up even longer in Imola, I don't know where the sleeping times came from again, and won the race," Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.
"Max has a different rhythm to me or other people, and the time he went to bed is nothing out of the ordinary for him. He didn't even wake up at 10 o'clock in Zandvoort when the helicopters flew over his motorhome. He's got his sleep quota. He's had it as usual. That's rubbish."
Verstappen's habit of gaming overnight isn't new -- it's something he's talked about at length this year. He won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix despite clips of him gaming into the early hours of race day going viral on both occasions.
Team boss Christian Horner said the team has no concerns about how Verstappen uses his free time during race weekends.
"I think people draw conclusions, but Max knows what's required and we trust his judgement on that," he said.
"He knows what it takes to drive a grand prix car and to win grands prix and be a world champion. And look, as a team, we always work as a team, and whatever discussions of how to improve will always not take place through media."
