Ted Kravitz explains heated exchange with Max Verstappen

Ted Kravitz has attempted to explain the heated exchange that unfolded with Max Verstappen and resulted in the four-time F1 champion criticising the Sky Sports F1 reporter.

In the wake of the incident between Verstappen and George Russell in the Spanish Grand Prix, and with the Red Bull driver asked persistently about it in the TV pen set up ahead of this weekend's race in Canada, Kravitz thought he would try a different tack.

Verstappen, however, was not receptive, and as much as Kravitz attempted to explain his reasoning for the question, Verstappen shut him down. You can read the exchange here.

Speaking on his 'Montreal Podbook' following media day in Montreal on Thursday, Kravitz stated that after all the questions about what unfolded with Russell, by the time Verstappen came to him, "he wasn’t in a particularly receptive mood".

He added" So I thought I’d go with a question about the team mistake that led him to that message in error to give the place back to Russell when the stewards said they were going to make him do it.

"So I asked him a question that I thought was going to be on his side and understanding his annoyance that set that whole fateful minute and a half off in the first place.

"So I said to him, ‘Max, what are you going to be doing, with the team, to improve the dialogue between your rules man, a guy called Stephen Knowles, who’s taken over from Jonathan Wheatley – to make sure that doesn’t happen again?’.

“Max either misunderstood it by accident, or took a rather over-negative interpretation of what I was saying. He said, ‘I don’t think it’s fair for you to single somebody out. I would never single somebody out for criticism in the team’.

"And I said, 'Hang on a moment Max. I'm not criticising, singling someone out. I named him because that's his name. I'm not just going to say, 'A team member who is in charge of the rules'.

"It's been announced that Jonathan Wheatley's replacement on the rules is a guy called Stephen Knowles. That's common knowledge. Should I not name him?

“What was I meant to do? Was I meant to say, 'An unnamed team representative that deals with the rules’? I said ‘No Max, I’m not just here to say, it was Stephen Knowles wasn’t it? Let’s blame him’.

"The question was, 'How have you learned to improve the communication so it doesn't happen again?'.

"And he just wouldn’t accept it. He just said, ‘Well, I think it’s not nice of you to do that’, at which point we ended the interview."