After the tyres were fitted, Verstappen was given the all clear to exit despite Antonelli approaching his pit box. The front-left wheel of Verstappen's car hit the right-rear of Antonelli's W15, shattering the wheel cover.

The Italian was forced to abandon his stop, which ultimately cost him a chance of a points finish despite starting the race on pole. It isn’t the first time this year that the 27-year-old has been hampered by a pit stop blunder, and after the race he called on his team to look into the incident.

“This is something we need to investigate,” he demanded. "They've all been different (the pit stop problems). You can’t really compare these things. We all don’t want that to happen, but it happened."

After the pair collided, shards of carbon fibre came off Antonelli's car. Indeed, Verstappen admitted that he was relieved that neither he, the 18-year-old nor any team crew members had been hurt.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was later pressed on Verstappen’s words. However, he stopped short of promising an investigation, saying: “It was a human error. We’ll learn from it."

Regardless, the driver recovered to beat Norris to first place in qualifying. Because of the Sprint race results, he’ll start Sunday’s Grand Prix 19 points off overall leader Oscar Piastri in the drivers’ standings, and 10 behind Norris.