Damon Hill has accused Max Verstappen of deliberately crashing into Lewis Hamilton at the Italian GP.
Hamilton and Verstappen collided on Lap 26, where both drivers didn’t back down from a tight corner. The move saw Verstappen run out of room and hit the sausage kerb, taking both him and Hamilton out of the race.
Hill slammed the Dutchman for his actions, and accused Verstappen of deliberately crashing into Hamilton.
“Looking at the replay of Max on Lewis, there was no way he was going to make that work,” Hill said, as quoted by the Independent.
“The only conclusion is he might have been thinking ‘I have to take him out’. I don’t want to think that of any driver, but I think it was either an error of judgement or a calculated move to collide with Lewis.
“It is strong and I don’t like the idea that I’m accusing anyone of doing that, but he’s got a points advantage, and this was a race which Mercedes was supposed to win.”
Controversy time
Hamilton spoke about the incident, saying the rules need to be addressed to deal with aggressive approaches like the one at Monza.
“There is a point in which you have to concede, go across the run-off, and I am not sure why Max didn’t,” Hamilton said.
“This will continue, but we have to learn from our scenarios on track. I don’t have a history of these incidents, and when you get away with things, you just continue to do it.
“We do need to look into this so the right decisions are being made. Nobody wants to see anyone get injured. If we put better protocols in maybe we can avoid this sort of stuff in the future,” he concluded.
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