28/08/2017
NEWS STORY
In the wake of a tweet posted on his Twitter account on Sunday evening, Esteban Ocon has this morning attempted to calm the situation before it gets out of hand.
Shortly after the race, which saw the pair collide twice, the second time resulting in damage to both cars and necessitating the deployment of the safety car, the French youngster took to social media.
"Damage limitation today," he tweeted, "we were having a good race until Perez tried to kill me 2 times!
"Anyway he didn't manage to do so ending up P9," he added, along with a winking face emoji.
{twittert=https://twitter.com/OconEsteban/status/901848988512649216}
The tweet followed similar comments made to the media after the race when Ocon told Channel 4: "He risked my life out there... at 300km/h down to Eau Rouge. 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."
This morning Ocon, following two tweets from Perez, the first admitting blame for the initial incident, the second suggesting Ocon had been over optimistic in terms of the second clash, took to social media again, admitting that his original tweet was posted in the heat of the moment.
"In the heat of the moment and given the dangerous situation, I was upset," he admitted. "But we will be moving forward, we are a team and I appreciate my teammate apologizing.
"We want to work better together. I'm committed to the success of Sahara Force India, and I'm confident that as a team we will put this behind us to reach even greater level of success together.
"We have a big challenge ahead with keeping 4th place, and nothing will distract us from that goal."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spa, here.