Max Verstappen believes there Sebastian Vettel has no excuses for squeezing him into the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen as the three drivers made contact at the start of the Singapore Grand Prix.
As the lights went out, the polesitter and the Dutchman had similar starts, while Kimi Raikkonen jumped from fourth and was soon alongside the front row starters heading towards the first corner.
Trying to defend from the Red Bull, Vettel moved across moved across meaning Verstappen had nowhere to go with the resulting collision compounded by a second hit between Raikkonen and the soon-to-be 20-year-old at Turn 1 itself. The retirement marked Verstappen’s seventh in 2017 and third as a result of a start crash.
“I think mainly Sebastian [is to be blamed],” he said. “He started squeezing me, maybe he didn’t see Kimi on the left but that’s not an excuse. If you are fighting for the world championship, you shouldn’t take those risks and really like squeeze someone that much.”
“I tried to back out of it because I could see it coming but the rear tyres are wider than the front so I couldn’t back out of it.”
As for the secondary collision, Max acknowledged it wasn’t Raikkonen’s fault, adding: “Into the first corner, those things can happen because Kimi had only two tyres left.”
The stewards will investigate the crash to determine if any penalty should be handed out and Verstappen believes the severity of the result from Vettel’s action does warrant action.
“I don’t think it was a racing incident. At the end of the day, they take a total of three cars and I was in the middle without doing anything wrong,” he said. “I was just trying to have a clean start but we’ll see what happens. At the end of the day, not only I retired, but all three of us have a bit of pain.”
