Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel were left pointing fingers at each other at the 2017 Azerbaijan GP.
The 2017 championship season was going smoothly until the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. An incident between Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel got both the drivers to point fingers at each other.
The two drivers were the front-runners for the championship title in 2017 and their rivalry caught fire during the race in Baku.
Vettel hit the back of Hamilton’s car while they were circling behind the safety car. The hit caused damage to both the cars leaving the Ferrari with a broken front wing and damaging the rear diffuser of the Mercedes.
Verstappen didn’t brake test Hamilton, and that’s pretty obvious. Anyway Hamilton can’t talk about brake testing after doing it to Vettel in Baku 2017. #bbcf1 #f1 #SaudiArabianGP pic.twitter.com/PkB9ITFrOR
— Pierce O’Connor (@Pierceoc22) December 5, 2021
Red bull’s Daniel Ricciardo took advantage of the chaos and went ahead to take the victory.
After the race, Vettel claimed that he had been brake tested by Hamilton. However, telemetry data later showed that Hamilton did not even touch the brake pedals of his car. Hamilton labelled the German as a disgrace for the incident.
After the accident, Vettel pulled his Ferrari next to Hamilton and made a gesture with his hand before turning to bang the wheels of the two cars together.
Defending himself, Vettel said, “F1 is for grown-ups. I drove alongside and we had a little contact. I wasn’t happy with the brake-testing. I drove alongside him and raised my hand to say that is not the way to do it.”
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Lewis Hamilton suggested Vettel sort the matter face-to-face
The Mercedes driver got so furious at his fellow driver’s behaviour that he challenged him to sort the face-to-face outside of the car.
He said: “He was obviously sleeping and driving alongside and deliberately driving into a driver and coming away scot-free is a disgrace. He disgraced himself.
“If he wants to prove he’s a man, we should do it out of the car face-to-face. Driving dangerously in any way can put another driver at risk. Luckily we were going slow.”
“If we were going fast it could have been a lot worse. Imagine all the kids watching Formula 1 today and seeing that kind of behaviour from a four-time world champion.”
Even though Vettel finished ahead of Hamilton and got more points in that race, Hamilton went ahead to win the championship. It was the fourth title of his career and third in four years of racing with Mercedes.
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