''If you hit a beaver you would have had problems''

On lap 32 of the Canadian Grand Prix, Verstappen reacted to a groundhog running across the track, which had to be dodged at the last moment. In the press conference, Verstappen addressed the moment.

Verstappen almost killed a groundhog

"He was almost dead! I started to get to the last Chicane, and I thought it was debris initially. So I started to close in, and then I was like, ‘Oh my God, it's an animal!’ So, yeah, I swerved right at the last moment. I don't know what happened after, I don’t know if you touched it or it ran off."

George Russell, who was driving behind Verstappen, appeared to have the answer to that question: "I saw it," George said. "Did he run away?" asked Max, after which Russell confirmed that the animal had run away. "I was quite happy because I caught you up by a couple of tenths," Russell then joked. "I really had to slow down for it because I was a bit off the dry line. Last year, of course, a bird flew into my car, so I didn't want to have a groundhog stuck in my car as well."

Verstappen closed the question by stating that he had kept calling it a beaver (which was not the case), but that it was actually a groundhog. To that, Norris joked: "If you hit a beaver you would have had problems," the Brit concluded, after which the three men burst into laughter.