MONTE CARLO, Monaco — Sergio Pérez labelled Kevin Magnussen’s driving at the Monaco Grand Prix “dangerous” and said he was baffled that race stewards did not investigate their collision.
Pérez crashed when Magnussen ran out of space on the inside and made contact, with the collision taking both drivers and the Danish driver’s Haas teammate Nico Hülkenberg out of the race.
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The crash caused a red flag stoppage but before the race was restarted the stewards confirmed they would not investigate it further, meaning they saw it as a racing incident.
Asked his reaction the lack of investigation, Pérez said: “I’m very surprised because the amount of damage and how dangerous the damage was, I’m fairly surprised. We need to ask for a reason why it’s not been investigated because without an investigation we don’t get a reason why it wasn’t a penalty.
“I’m really surprised. I think I got the ‘lap one, let them race’, but I think this was more dangerous driving just to keep it flat out knowing that they were going to come contact at some point. I think that was some dangerous driving.”
Pérez said he would have known to back out if the roles were reversed.
“If you see my onboard at no point, you see Kevin’s car not even close to me, alongside me, and you could see that the wall is just getting closer and closer and to keep it flat out,” Pérez said.
“There was only one way out of it. You know, and it was either contact with my car, with the barrier, there were just simply no room for both cars. And at some point he had to realize that, you know, I’ve been in that location and many times when you are the car behind, you just have to realize that it’s time to back off, you know, before things get closer to you.”
The lack of investigation ended any prospect of a penalty for Magnussen.
Due to a string of recent incidents the Danish driver is two penalty points away from a one-race ban.
Asked if he felt the stewards didn’t investigate to avoid having to implement a ban, he replied: “I don’t want to be getting involved in that.”
He added: “I don’t think he really thinks about it, you know, about the outcome. You sometimes find yourself in a position and you have to take a very quick decision to say, okay, there’s only one way of it and it’s going to be contact. I think we’ve got more important things to focus on. It’s been a very frustrating weekend, we are super frustrating.”