I Deserved a Penalty for Crash: Raikkonen

British GP Pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton made a slow getaway at the start, dropping him to third. This put him under pressure from Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari on the approach to the Village complex.

That was when things unravelled, Raikkonen locked up and slid into Hamilton. He pitched the Mercedes into a spin and Hamilton rejoined in 18th. Fortunately, the home favourite recovered to second, while Raikkonen ultimately finished third.

“It was my mistake,” he said. “So that’s fine. I deserve it, I took the 10 seconds and kept fighting. That’s how it goes. On the third corner, I locked the wheel and I ended up hitting Lewis on the rear corner. Obviously he spun, so my bad, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

“Without the mistakes and the 10-second penalty, it would have been better but I tried. My view, I did the best that I could, but there seems to be opposite looks of what I’m doing unfortunately.”

Raikkonen alluded to Mercedes’ comments regarding to the fact that it was the second time in three races that Ferrari and Mercedes tangled. Especially after Sebastian Vettel collided with Valtteri Bottas in France.

Hamilton spoke of “interesting tactics from that side” on the podium. Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff said: “A racing incident. Unfortunate because at Le Castellet, it was the first time we got taken out and now it is the second time we got taken out. 

“It is a lot of constructors’ points [lost]. In [Technical Director] James Allison’s words ‘do you think it was deliberate or incompetence?’ This is where it leaves us with the judgement.”

But Vettel and Raikkonen ruled out any malice in the two separate incidents.

“Things can happen, but I think it’s quite silly to think that anything that happened was deliberate,” said Vettel, who clinched victory. “At least I would struggle to be that precise in order to take someone out. 

“In France I lost my wing so I screwed my own race. I think it’s easy to attack and have a great move, and easy to have an incident. I only saw it briefly on the monitor, and I don’t think there was any intention. I find it a bit unnecessary to even go there.”

Raikkonen added: “Things happen sometimes. Funnily enough you start blaming us for doing it on purpose but I locked the wheel, unfortunately we touched and we both paid the price for it and that’s how it goes sometimes. 

“It’s easy to say after the last couple of races that we’re suddenly doing something against them, but we’ve been hit pretty many times also, so that’s how it goes, unfortunately.”