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It cost the team dearly, even a win was on the cards. So, who was at fault? And what will it do to the team atmosphere?

Ocon's fault. It was rather similar to the Bottas / Raikkonen incident on the first lap.

Cost the team a 1-2 I believe.

Ocon no doubt, now thats something really costly and not what happened in Canada.

From my memory it was fairly clearly Ocon's fault when he kept squeezing Pérez against the wall after the corner. As far as the team atmosphere goes, it certainly seems to have taken a turn for the worse after Canada, and I can't see this helping it any.

j man wrote:Ocon's fault. It was rather similar to the Bottas / Raikkonen incident on the first lap.

Cost the team a 1-2 I believe.

Except that Ocon left even less space to Perez than what Bottas left to Kimi.

nixxxon wrote:

j man wrote:Ocon's fault. It was rather similar to the Bottas / Raikkonen incident on the first lap.

Cost the team a 1-2 I believe.

Except that Ocon left even less space to Perez than what Bottas left to Kimi.

Indeed. Ocon continued to push him into the wall after the corner and resulted in a second contact. It was a bit amateurish and not the way to race against your team mate. He's still learning though, it's all good experience for him.

Ocon posted a video to twitter which showed Perez move over on him and bang wheels into the braking zone for T2. Not an excuse and what happened on the exit of T2 was clearly Ocon's fault but worth pointing out Perez wasn't playing nice.

Also I'd say racing incident as it looked more like Ocon simply misjudged the amount of room Perez had on the exit, you can see from his steering input he isn't trying to move closer to the wall.

Racing incident (as in not penalty worthy) but Ocon's fault.

Was really gutted by this incident as there was a potential for a 1-2 on the podium.

It looks like a racing incident but they need to be careful otherwise their 4th place in the WCC will be under threat.

I wonder if driver hierarchy could sort out things?

UnlikeUday wrote:Was really gutted by this incident as there was a potential for a 1-2 on the podium.

It looks like a racing incident but they need to be careful otherwise their 4th place in the WCC will be under threat.

I wonder if driver hierarchy could sort out things?

I actually feel more sorry for Massa. He had one of the best starts of any driver. Was ahead of Ocon at the restart. The 2 Force Indias both made a slightly stupid move. Perez to start with but Ocon had no excuse for what he did next. At the next restart, Massa nearly takes 2nd.Then the Red flag came. After that, it all went wrong for him. His pace was better than Stroll's until he had his issue and since he was ahead at every restart other than when he had the problem, I think he could have been more than 5 seconds ahead of Stroll and beaten Ricciardo to the win. It will have been amazing if he won. He certainly lost the strong opportunity of this. I think he had better pace than both of the Force India drivers if I'm honest.

Ocon cleary was doing what men do! (yes a snarky Vettel reference).

Not really sure what Ocon is attempting to justify by posting that video? Yes, the first bit of contact is Perez's fault, but a) they both got away with that and b) that doesn't justify then squeezing Sergio into the wall like that and expecting him to go where, exactly? If he had left him a little more room then we might well have been talking about Ocon's first podium, not a second silly FI-related incident in a row.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:His pace was better than Stroll's until he had his issue and since he was ahead at every restart other than when he had the problem, I think he could have been more than 5 seconds ahead of Stroll and beaten Ricciardo to the win.

I doubt Ricciardo was pushing; his gap to Stroll was a nearly constant 5 seconds, but I think if he'd had a quicker driver behind he'd have driven faster. I don't think a Williams could have won the race, although I certainly agree Massa would have kept second.

This is going to sound a bit extreme but these two can't be team mates next year. Yes they probably pushed each other forward in terms of performance the start of the year, its starting to look like a bit of a civil war at force India. They have already cost the team podiums in the last two races and the lack of remorse between drivers in both incidents suggests it's a fight for superiority between the highly regarded Perez (who has to justify his reputation if he wants a better drive) and the younger charger in Ocon who is desperate to impress.
Whilst a championship contending team can live with this rivalry a smaller team who need points and prize money to survive, the current act is hurting long term prosperity.

I thought it was Perez's fault until I realised I had them mixed up! So the one on the inside, which turned out to be Ocon

It's karma for Perez. I don't have any sympathy for him.

GingerFurball wrote:It's karma for Perez. I don't have any sympathy for him.

I thought so too. If Perez hadn't been so selfish in Canada, Ocon might have shown him the respect to not close him off completely at the next earliest opportunity. I anticipated there would be repercussions from that event, just didn't expect it to be the loss of a potential 1-2 at the very next race.

In fact, you might even say karma was the theme of this race. VET cost himself a win with his red mist moment. HAM's headrest problem you could argue too, if indeed he had any ill intent before the restart.

CAR1 wrote:

GingerFurball wrote:It's karma for Perez. I don't have any sympathy for him.

I thought so too. If Perez hadn't been so selfish in Canada, Ocon might have shown him the respect to not close him off completely at the next earliest opportunity. I anticipated there would be repercussions from that event, just didn't expect it to be the loss of a potential 1-2 at the very next race.

In fact, you might even say karma was the theme of this race. VET cost himself a win with his red mist moment. HAM's headrest problem you could argue too, if indeed he had any ill intent before the restart.

Even if Ocon wanted some sweet revenge, this was the worst race to do so as this was a golden chance for them finishing on the podium together.

I wouldn't mind team orders come into play as this will cost the team dearly.

UnlikeUday wrote:

CAR1 wrote:

GingerFurball wrote:It's karma for Perez. I don't have any sympathy for him.

I thought so too. If Perez hadn't been so selfish in Canada, Ocon might have shown him the respect to not close him off completely at the next earliest opportunity. I anticipated there would be repercussions from that event, just didn't expect it to be the loss of a potential 1-2 at the very next race.

In fact, you might even say karma was the theme of this race. VET cost himself a win with his red mist moment. HAM's headrest problem you could argue too, if indeed he had any ill intent before the restart.

Even if Ocon wanted some sweet revenge, this was the worst race to do so as this was a golden chance for them finishing on the podium together.

I wouldn't mind team orders come into play as this will cost the team dearly.

I think it's just costing them trophies. I'd say they're safe enough in 4th place

Technically Ocon's fault because he put his team-mate in a spot where contact was inevitable.
Club that with what Perez did in Canada and leading up to the incident in Baku, one would see Ocon's point in not wanting to play nice with someone who won't return the favor.

It's fine margins and split-second decisions at racing speeds, I definitely don't think he intentionally took Perez out.

While you could maybe apportion blame from a team point of view, I think from a rules point of view it was a racing incident. While Ocon possibly could and maybe should have given Perez more room for both drivers and the the team's longer term benefit but I don't seem him changing line to actively squeeze him on the exit, and he is ahead by that point anyway.

As much as it isn't really relevant, and maybe Ocon looks bad posting it because it make the move after look like payback, Perez's jink on the straight is indeed probably worse.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

UnlikeUday wrote:Was really gutted by this incident as there was a potential for a 1-2 on the podium.

It looks like a racing incident but they need to be careful otherwise their 4th place in the WCC will be under threat.

I wonder if driver hierarchy could sort out things?

I actually feel more sorry for Massa. He had one of the best starts of any driver. Was ahead of Ocon at the restart. The 2 Force Indias both made a slightly stupid move. Perez to start with but Ocon had no excuse for what he did next. At the next restart, Massa nearly takes 2nd.Then the Red flag came. After that, it all went wrong for him. His pace was better than Stroll's until he had his issue and since he was ahead at every restart other than when he had the problem, I think he could have been more than 5 seconds ahead of Stroll and beaten Ricciardo to the win. It will have been amazing if he won. He certainly lost the strong opportunity of this. I think he had better pace than both of the Force India drivers if I'm honest.

agreed, massa was looking good all race long. A win was definately up for grabs for him after ocon & perez collided.

wolfticket wrote:While you could maybe apportion blame from a team point of view, I think from a rules point of view it was a racing incident. While Ocon possibly could and maybe should have given Perez more room for both drivers and the the team's longer term benefit but I don't seem him changing line to actively squeeze him on the exit, and he is ahead by that point anyway.

As much as it isn't really relevant, and maybe Ocon looks bad posting it because it make the move after look like payback, Perez's jink on the straight is indeed probably worse.

It's a bad coincidence that this was a street circuit where there was no breathing space.

But such incidents have to be avoided, especially with your teammate.

Either way the team have thrown away a likely 2 or 3 podium finishes over the last 2 races. These last 2 tracks are also likely their best opportunities as only Monza is as much of a drag race and that's later in the year when the big teams will have pulled away in development.

Funny how many drivers could potentially have won this race with what happened to the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers...

VJM has said that inspite of having inside talk with drivers reminding them that the team will always come first, they're free to race each other.

https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/15156

Mayhem wrote:

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

UnlikeUday wrote:Was really gutted by this incident as there was a potential for a 1-2 on the podium.

It looks like a racing incident but they need to be careful otherwise their 4th place in the WCC will be under threat.

I wonder if driver hierarchy could sort out things?

I actually feel more sorry for Massa. He had one of the best starts of any driver. Was ahead of Ocon at the restart. The 2 Force Indias both made a slightly stupid move. Perez to start with but Ocon had no excuse for what he did next. At the next restart, Massa nearly takes 2nd.Then the Red flag came. After that, it all went wrong for him. His pace was better than Stroll's until he had his issue and since he was ahead at every restart other than when he had the problem, I think he could have been more than 5 seconds ahead of Stroll and beaten Ricciardo to the win. It will have been amazing if he won. He certainly lost the strong opportunity of this. I think he had better pace than both of the Force India drivers if I'm honest.

agreed, massa was looking good all race long. A win was definately up for grabs for him after ocon & perez collided.

True. I am very sad for Massa. Surely one of the drivers with worst luck.