Red Bull's three-time world champion Max Verstappen said he drove with blurred vision after a collision with title rival Lewis Hamilton at the 2021 British Grand Prix, but the problem no longer worries him.
The Dutch driver was quoted in the team's Red Bulletin last week as saying he had struggled with vision problems during several races in his title battle against Mercedes driver Hamilton.
The news came as a surprise and also raised some security concerns.
“I've never said this before, but it was so bad for a couple of laps that I seriously considered retiring the car,” he said of that season's US Grand Prix. The eye-catching quote was later removed.
On Thursday at the Hungarian Grand Prix, he told reporters that this would not happen until 2021. “After that, it disappeared. I mean, it actually happened then,” said the Dutch driver.
When asked if this happened immediately after the Silverstone collision, when Verstappen hit the wall at high speed at a crucial moment of the season and was taken to hospital for examination, he replied: “That didn't happen before.”
“We are racing drivers. You have to deal with all kinds of things. There are always people here and there who get small injuries or something like that. Things like that happen.”
“Fortunately, it has healed. I don't want to go into detail, nobody needs to know.”
Verstappen is 84 points ahead in the 2024 championship with 12 of 24 races remaining and is on course for his fourth consecutive title.
The Dutch driver has won seven races this year, but he faces a tough battle in Hungary this weekend as Mercedes seeks its third consecutive win and McLaren also looks strong in the race.