28/08/2017
NEWS STORY
Unsurprisingly, following another controversial race which, not for the first time, saw the warring Pink Panthers clash and has culminated in the team now revoking their licence to race one another, the spat continued long after the chequered flag had fallen.
"Risking our lives for nothing..." Ocon told Channel 4. "He risked my life out there.
"That's the first thing," he continued, "the second thing is we lost a lot of points.
"He's supposed to be a professional driver, today he didn't show it. He has not done that with any other teammates, I don't know why he's doing it with me. I'm going to go and speak to him man to man and tell him the truth. He's going to have a child. I don't know if he wants to die or something. It's just ridiculous."
While Perez took responsibility for the first clash, the Mexican insisted the second, more serious, clash was not down to him, saying he wasn't aware of the Frenchman's intentions, a claim not accepted by Ocon.
"Of course he knew," snapped Ocon. "I accept the first one. We were three-wide, maybe he didn't see me... even if I think he saw me."
For his part, the Mexican claims that following the earlier incident he wasn't expecting Ocon to make a move until after Eau Rouge, and did not deliberately force his teammate into the wall a second time.
"I didn't do anything different that I wouldn't have done to any other drivers," he said. "No other driver would have done differently.
"The first one was totally my fault, I didn't see him," he admitted, "I apologise for that one.
"The second one, he was too optimistic," he insisted, "there was no need to touch there."
Admitting that there has been a degree of bad blood between the pair since Azerbaijan, Perez denied that yesterday's clashes were a form of retribution.
"We have to look back, remember Baku, he put me in the wall," he said. "I'm not saying I did it because of that but tension started back then. It's the first time I've had this in my career and hopefully we can sort it out and start scoring good points for the team."
In subsequents post on Twitter, following Ocon's claims that he had deliberately risked his life, the Mexican said: "I'm very disappointed to see his comments regarding that I wanted to kill him or whatsoever," said Perez. “I'm not that type of guy, I'm not going to make a stupid comment."
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{twitterv=https://twitter.com/SChecoPerez/status/901915939318390784}
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