Verstappen claims Raikkonen radio complaints “ridiculous”

Verstappen and Raikkonen first touched at the La Source hairpin on the opening lap, when Raikkonen’s Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel pushed Raikkonen into the Red Bull.

But it was their later touch at Les Combes, and an incident a lap later where Raikkonen had to lift to avoid running into the back of Verstappen as he moved across the circuit in front of him at 200mph on the Kemmel Straight, that sparked two angry radio messages from the Finn.

“Clearly his only interest is pushing me off the circuit completely,” said Raikkonen after he tried to pass around the outside of Les Combes but was forced into the run-off and had to give the position back.

After the second incident on the straight, he ranted: “Come on, this is f**king ridiculous now, he’s just f**king turning when I’m at full speed on the right.” 

But Verstappen refuted his comments, labelling them “a big lie”.

“He should say that in Turn 1,” said Verstappen. “It’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s good television when somebody is moaning.

“But especially after Turn 1 when they did something like that. I’m not going to give up my position to them that easy afterwards.

“To be honest, I think that’s a big lie. I’m just defending my position. If somebody doesn’t like it that’s his own problem.”

Explains first-corner clash

On the subject of the first-corner collision between himself and the Ferraris, Verstappen added: “The start wasn’t great, but from there I dived up the inside and didn’t lock a wheel and was easily making the corner but they just kept squeezing me.

“I was on the inside, Kimi was squeezing me and the Sebastian just turned in on both of us. He turned into the corner where there was already two cars.

“That gave my front wing a lot of damage, and obviously the floor got destroyed. From there on your race is gone.”

Verstappen's team boss Christian Horner confirmed the damage sustained at the first corner was the root cause of him being unable to get back into the points.

“It’s very tough for him, because all the damage was done at the first corner,” said Horner. “We were able to change the front wing, but the damage to the front splitter and so on was worth about 1.5s a lap.

“His race was really compromised from that point, so he was really unlucky to pick up that damage at the first turn. He got squeezed from the outside, and three into one doesn’t go.”