Sky Sports reporter has opened up on the moment he was forced to end his interview with an increasingly agitated ahead of this weekend's . The experienced reporter got on the wrong side of Verstappen as he quizzed the Dutchman about his road rage incident in Barcelona two weeks ago.

The racer is one penalty point away from a ban after ramming into . He did so out of anger, having lost his temper about collisions with Russell and moments beforehand, and the final straw was his team advising him to move aside for the Brit.

Red Bull clearly felt that their driver was likely to get a penalty if he didn't, but it still prompted a furious response from Verstappen. And, to make matter worse, the stewards later clarified that they felt the Dutchman was entitled to keep the place ahead of Russell on track.

Kravitz tried to ask a question about Red Bull's decision-making, mentioning by name Stephen Knowles who is the team's expert on the rules now that previous sporting director Jonathan Wheatley has left. But that only riled up Verstappen who leapt to the defence of his colleague.

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He snapped: "I think it's not really nice to try and single out a person, to be honest, because that's never the case. I think we just look at it as a team, what we always can do better, and that's also how we look at it in Barcelona. But it's not fair to now single out one single person."

Kravitz tried to clarify what he meant and replied: "I don't think I was singling him out. I wasn't saying it was Stephen Knowles' fault. I just named him." But that did not appease Verstappen who retorted: "But you mentioned him. We're talking about him. You're singling him out.

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"I do not need to discuss that anyway here. If we ever look at things that we can do better, we do that, like every other team. But I'm not going to stand here in front of the camera and say who was at fault exactly. We all live and learn."

Kravitz began to reply again but, perhaps sensing that it wasn't going to improve the situation, chose to end the interview there. Explaining his side of the story on the Ted's Podbook podcast, he said: "[Verstappen] wasn't in a particularly receptive mood about [the George Russell incident], so I thought I'd go with a question about the team mistake that led to that message in error to give the place back to Russell.

"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'.

"What was I meant to do? Was I meant to say, 'an unnamed team representative that deals with the rules?' I said, 'I'm just not here to say it was Stephen Knowles wasn't it, let's blame him.' And then 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."