The Ocon-Perez incident on lap 1 was one of the highlights of the otherwise ‘boring’ grand prix under the lights at Singapore today.
With none of the drivers colliding on Turn 1, Sergio Perez took it upon himself to provide the viewers with some action.
Ocon and Perez were racing wheel to wheel going into the first left-hander after Turn 1, but apparently the Mexican did not seem there and ended up not giving the young driver any space at all.
Perez was at fault largely, because there is no way that he did not see his teammate right beside him.
Szafnauer has now blasted Perez for the incident and has confirmed that the duo won’t be allowed to race in the future as they haven’t been very mature with it.
“I didn’t remind them here, maybe I should have done,” he said as quoted by Motorsport.com
“But they know it now, and again they’re not going to race any more if they can’t do it.
“There wasn’t any room, Checo should have given him room, and Checo had plenty of room.
“Esteban put himself in a position where if Checo moved over, he couldn’t do anything about it. But your teammate shouldn’t do that to you.
“If it’s another car, then you shouldn’t have put yourself there. But if it’s your teammate, you’ve got to have that respect.
“It’s just a matter of fact, it is what it is. And next race we’ll tell them the rules, and it won’t happen again, it’s that simple.” he added.
Despite there being no penalty, Szafnauer felt that the teammates should have been more careful.
“They looked at it and said racing incident, and I’m sure it was, if they weren’t teammates.
“But from my perspective, you leave your teammate room, the team comes first. And he had room to leave him.
“The thing is as a team owner or team principal or a manager, once they’re out there, you can’t control them.
“You’ve got to do the controlling here, before you go out. So he’s in the same position. Once they’re out there they’ve got the wheel, so we’ve got to control them before that.
“It hurt us. We should have scored at least 10 today, and that means McLaren would have been behind us. It hurt us by a good 10-12 points.” he concluded.
