The incident happened during an extraordinary final five laps after a late safety car.
Until then, Verstappen had been on course for a strong third place, after challenging the McLarens on a three-stop strategy, compared to their two.
When the safety car was deployed, all the leaders – and most of the rest of the field – pitted for fresh soft tyres. But because of their three-stop strategy, Red Bull’s choices were limited.
They had to choose between leaving Verstappen out on his soft tyres, on which he had done eight racing laps; or pitting for either another set of softs that had done one qualifying lap and the in- and out-laps, some practice starts, and the laps to the grid; or a new set of the hard-compound tyres.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted that in hindsight, the best choice would have been to leave him out.
This would have put Verstappen in the lead. He would almost certainly have lost out to the McLaren drivers and perhaps Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc but that would have left him fourth, one place better than he finished on the road before his penalty.
Instead, they brought him for the fresh hard tyres. Verstappen questioned the decision upon returning to the track, and then nearly lost control in a massive moment on the exit of the final corner on the restart as he fought to keep pace with the cars on grippier tyres around him.
He was immediately passed by Leclerc on the straight, the two cars lightly touching as their trajectories converged, and then by Russell into the first corner, where they banged wheels.
Verstappen accused Russell of barging him off the track, and was also upset about the Leclerc incident. But after stewards launched an investigation into him leaving the track and gaining an advantage, Red Bull decided to ask him to let Russell by to avoid a penalty.
Horner admitted Verstappen was “obviously upset and annoyed” and “frustrated” but said they would discuss the matter internally.
Verstappen said that he felt the “biggest issue” was with F1’s racing guidelines.
“What is allowed, what isn’t, is not very natural,” Verstappen said. “And that is quite frustrating. And of course, sometimes it works for you, sometimes it works against you, and today that worked against me.”
According to the guidelines, Russell was entitled to the corner, because he was more or less completely alongside Verstappen – the rules say that a driver overtaking on the inside has to have his car’s front axle at least level with the wing mirror of the one one the outside to be given space.
Stewards took no further action over the incident with Leclerc on the straight because “both cars were moving slightly towards each other in the middle of the track and a minor collision occurred as a result.
“Both drivers were of the view that this was an avoidable collision and could potentially have resulted in a major crash but neither driver was wholly or predominantly to blame.”
Leclerc said: “Max wanted to bring me towards the inside where there’s all the [torn-up used tyre] rubber, so I didn’t want to go too much there. So, I was trying to push him to the left. There was a little bit of contact, but fortunately for us, no consequences.”
