Sergio Perez says the collision with Lewis Hamilton caused “massive damage” to his car that led to his retirement from the Sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix, but the Mercedes driver feels the penalty he received for it was harsh.
Hamilton was trying to overtake Perez on the inside having got a run out of Stavelot in wet conditions, but the pair touched through the following right-hander and the Red Bull stayed ahead at the time. The contact saw Perez suffer damage that cost him significant performance and as he dropped through the field the team opted to retire his car, with Hamilton getting a five-second time penalty for the incident.
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“Yeah, it was massive damage from the contact from Lewis,” Perez said. “He just took out the whole right-hand side of the car. He damaged the floor and sidepod so that was game over — we lost too much grip with it.
“Basically he ran out of grip and could not stop his car and just went into the side of me and damaged my floor and that was very unfortunate.
“I think he was in a bit of a hurry. Everyone was in a hurry to recover today — it’s a very short race and you need to take that level of risk. But not nice to get my race ruined by him.”
Hamilton ⚔️ Perez
Both drivers were giving it everything in this mini-battle! 😮#BelgianGP #F1Sprint pic.twitter.com/36Gz2VdVlP
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 29, 2023
However, Hamilton felt the collision didn’t warrant punishment and referenced Ayrton Senna when stating he felt he was in a position to try and make the move stick.
“Not really much to say — racing incident I think,” Hamilton said. “I tried to go up the inside … I mean my only thought is it’s tricky conditions out there, we’re all trying our best, and of course it wasn’t intentional.
“I think I went for a gap, he was slow going through (Turn) 14, I went up the inside, I was more than half a car length on the inside, and if you no longer go for a gap you’re no longer a racing driver as Ayrton said, so that’s what I did. When I watched it back it felt like a racing incident to me.”
Although he didn’t agree with the penalty, Hamilton says he is less concerned about the lost points in a sprint event when he wasn’t in contention for victory, as he was demoted from fourth to seventh in the classification.
“In a race like today I honestly don’t really care too much, you don’t get too many points. Of course it would have been nice to have finished fourth but I don’t really care to finish fourth, I want to win. Fourth, seventh — doesn’t really make a difference.”