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Esteban Ocon posts a series of images to prove his innocence

Utkarsh Bhatla
Published

Ocon's message for George Russell

Esteban Ocon has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons this season, from not finding a seat for himself for 2019, to crashing into teammate Perez and last night into race leader Max Verstappen.

Max Verstappen had overtaken Lewis Hamilton on the straight before Turn 1 to take the lead of the Brazilian GP, thanks to some brilliant driving on his part and the brilliant adaptability of that Red Bull chassis.

Verstappen looked to be on course for a win, only to collide with Ocon and lose out on track position.

Initially it seemed like only Ocon was at fault, trying to un lap himself from the race leader and going a little too hard for it.

However, repeat footage of the same incident(from different angles) show that Max left Ocon too little space and Ocon had nowhere to go.

Ocon was given a 10 second penalty for impeding the race leader and while he did accept the punishment dished out to him by the FIA, he then went onto defend himself, saying that he was well within his rights to un lap himself, especially when he was a little faster than Verstappen there, largely because of his fresh tyres.

Now, Ocon has gone onto release two messages regarding last night’s incidents, one where he has apologised to Max for causing him to miss out on a race win and two where he has put out a series of images to claim his innocence.

Ocon has emphasised on the fact that while he did drive hard, he was always fair and by putting up the image of his car wheel to wheel with Max’s during the turn,  he is trying to show that Max left him with no space to work with.

Yes, he shouldn’t really have gone for with when the race leader was involved, but Verstappen too should have been cautious, especially when he knew that a race win was at stake.

Hopefully the duo can put the incident behind them and get past this as professionals who mutually respect each other.

Check out some of the twitter reactions related to the fiasco:

Whose fault do you think it was?

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