Verstappen penalty would have had 'impact' on Red Bull's F1 future

Red Bull motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko says the team might have been left considering their future in Formula 1 had Max Verstappen been stripped of victory at the Austrian Grand Prix by a penalty.

Verstappen produced one of the great performances of recent years to climb from P8 to victory at the Red Bull Ring, but had to wait for more than three hours after the chequered flag fell to confirm victory as his late-race overtake on Charles Leclerc was investigated.

In the end, no punishment was forthcoming, but Marko says the wait for victory to be rubber-stamped came with some forward-looking thoughts between himself and Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz.

Marko told Motorsport-Total.com: "If the victory had been taken from us, that would certainly have had an impact.

"We were not speaking concretely about what we would do. But we said: 'So Formula 1 is not interesting.'

"There you can use the words of Max, when he said: 'We may as well stay at home.'"

The case of Verstappen's pass on Leclerc being investigated is the latest example of the stewards having significant influence over the races, after Sebastian Vettel had victory taken from him in Canada and Daniel Ricciardo lost points, after a similar wait to Verstappen, in France.

"The stewards are in a corset, and if a case is passed on to them, they are bound by the rules and may then have to punish," Marko added. "Of course I would have been upset too, but I always said there have to be different rules: first of all, not so many things should come to the stewards, and secondly they should not be forced to pronounce a punishment at once and have much more leeway in their decisions."

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