With Sergio Perez and Felipe Massa continuing their battle from Canada in the media, the teams have also had their say.
The Mexican and Brazilian ended the Canadian Grand Prix in hospital after their Force India and Williams cars collided going into the first corner of the final lap of the race.
The race stewards adjudged that Perez was at fault for the incident, which sent both drivers crashing into the wall at a force of 27G.
It cost the drivers solid points with Perez at that stage in fourth place, whilst Massa was fifth and pushing for a podium finish.
Both drivers have pointed the finger at one another after they were discharged from hospital and it’s fair to say that the two teams have backed their drivers position on the incident.
‘We were lucky not to have had someone seriously hurt and lucky not to collect Sebastian in a side-on impact. Williams head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley told the BBC.
According to Smedley, Williams showed the race stewards evidence that not only had Massa braked five metres earlier than the lap before, they showed similar distances between Vettel and Massa through the braking phase and it showed Perez ‘backing towards Felipe’.
Smedley added: ‘Perez brakes very early, and the car jinks to the left, either because he does it or because of brake problems, I don’t know.
‘we showed them evidence from the radio transcript [with Perez] talking about ‘I have no rear brakes.’ And they [Force India] said: ‘If you can carry on, carry on, and if you can’t, pit.’
‘That sounds like a terminal problem and why you leave a car out in that condition is beyond me.
Force India’s deputy team principal Bob Fernley took a reserved stance immediately following the incident, stating that ‘We need to look at the data and see what actually happened.’
But it seems that despite Perez struggling with a mechanical braking issue, that Force India are now happy to enter into a war of words with Williams via Twitter.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words… who crashes into whom? – click for link
Adding We’re not used to air our grievances publicly. But when others do and accuse us of playing with others’ safety, we are compelled to reply.
Whilst Perez said: ‘I’m not happy about comments saying we should have retired the car, It was perfectly driveable with just some adjustments and we showed it up until the moment in which we were taken out. Other cars out there had been in similar conditions for way longer than us and they finished the race without problems.
‘If someone thinks you can keep two Red Bulls behind for as long as we did with so-called ‘terminal’ problems, they are clearly misguided.?
Williams & Force India go public
