Sebastian Vettel says it is “silly” to accuse Ferrari of intentionally sabotaging Lewis Hamilton’s race after his teammate Kimi Raikkonen collided with the Mercedes driver on the first lap of the British Grand Prix.
After finishing second behind Vettel at the end of Sunday’s race, Hamilton said Ferrari had employed some “interesting tactics” to come away with the victory. He went on to make reference to Vettel taking out Valtteri Bottas on the first lap of the French Grand Prix two weeks ago, but stopped short of saying Raikkonen defnitely hit him on purpose at Silverstone.
When Vettel was asked to reply to Hamilton’s comments, he brushed off suggestions Raikkonen went out of his way to ruin his title rival’s race.
“Things can happen, but I think it’s quite silly to think that anything that happened was deliberate,” he said. “At least I would struggle to be that precise in order to take someone out. In France I lost my wing so I screwed my own race.
“I think it’s easy to attack and have a great move, and easy to have an incident. I only saw it briefly, and I don’t think there was any intention. I find it a bit unnecessary to even go there.”
Kimi Raikkonen said he simply locked a wheel under braking at Turn 3 and pointed out that accidents often happen on the first lap of a race.
“Things happen sometimes. Funnily enough you start blaming us for doing it on purpose but I locked the wheel, unfortunately we touched and we both paid the price for it and that’s how it goes sometimes.
“It’s easy to say after the last couple of races that we’re suddenly doing something against them, but we’ve been hit pretty many times also, so that’s how it goes, unfortunately.”
Sunday’s result means Vettel has extended his lead in the championship to eight points over Hamilton.
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