Max Verstappen says Lewis Hamilton 'a little jealous' over sustained Red Bull success ahead of F1 Italian GP

Max Verstappen's focus may be on his attempt to win a historic 10th consecutive Grand Prix race at Monza on Sunday, but he still found time to respond to Lewis Hamilton's latest controversial comments.

Interviewed in the lead-up to the Italian GP, Hamilton seemed to downplay Verstappen's success at Red Bull.

He said: "It's actually interesting because I was running this morning and I was thinking about this. The narrative that goes through the media.

"When I qualified half a second, six tenths ahead of Valtteri [Bottas, Hamilton's former Mercedes team-mate], they didn't say the same thing as they say today when Max qualifies six tenths ahead of [Red Bull team-mate Sergio] Perez - it's blown up much more."

Hamilton continued, questioning the level of competition that Verstappen has faced at Red Bull.

"In my personal opinion, Valtteri, and actually all my team-mates, have been stronger than the team-mates that Max has had. Jenson [Button], Fernando [Alonso], George [Russell], Valtteri, Nico [Rosberg] - I've had so many.

"These guys have all been very consistent, and Max has not raced against anyone like that."

The suggestion that Verstappen's victories have been against nominally weaker team-mates was met with short shrift by the Dutchman.

Speaking to Dutch media, he said: "Maybe [Hamilton] is a little jealous of my current success.

"This kind of statement... he possibly thinks he's winning something with that, but it makes no difference to me. I think Mercedes have a very hard time dealing with losing, after all these years of winning so much.

"You can keep shouting and screaming that what we do is not that special... you just have to deal with yourself."

Former world champion Rosberg also weighed in on the controversy.

He told Sky Sports: "It’s strange that Lewis does talk about that, like ‘my team-mates were better’. Where did that come from? [It’s] a bit strange. But I do think he has a point. I mean he had three world champions as team-mates. That says a lot, doesn’t it? So I do think it’s correct. Nevertheless, it’s not really that relevant because we all know how amazingly awesome Max is driving."

"Max is going very strongly towards that same level as Hamilton, Schumacher, Senna. He’s going to be one of those closely almost top-five greats."

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