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Rival Formula 1 teams will not seek an investigation into Red Bull driver Sergio Perez’s Monaco Grand Prix qualifying crash and the suspicions it might have been deliberate.
There were suggestions Max Verstappen suspected Perez had crashed on purpose that emerged after Verstappen refused to hand over sixth place at the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix, stating his reasons for ignoring the team order were “about something that happened in the past”.
Perez has denied the crash, which happened at the Portier right-hander before the tunnel during Q3 and also caught up Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, was deliberate.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is open to an investigation, but indicated it would require a team to make a complaint for this to happen.
“I didn’t have anyone who said we want to investigate it from our side, but if there is something to be investigated, we are more than happy [to do so],” said Ben Sulayem.
But Red Bull’s leading rivals, including Ferrari, showed no interest in such an investigation. Instead, they stressed the need to evaluate potential rule changes that could lead to drivers causing red flags losing qualifying laptimes to ensure there is no incentive for deliberate offs.
“What happened in Monaco is very difficult to judge from outside,” said Binotto.
“I don’t think we can judge and it’s not down to us to do it. The FIA has the data, I’m pretty sure they looked at it at the time and we need to move forward.
“I think that moving forward, maybe we should discuss what we should do in that type of situation, but I don’t think there is a clear answer right now. There was a point yesterday at the F1 Commission, Zak [Brown, McLaren chairman] raised it. Let’s maybe start the discussion.
“But more important for us now I think is really moving forward. I don’t think there is any need to review what happened in Monaco today.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said he doesn’t believe Perez would have risked damage that led to a grid penalty by deliberately crashing.
He also warned that such an investigation risks being another “PR crisis” related to Red Bull that F1 doesn’t need.
“We haven’t got the data,” he said of Perez’s crash. “Monaco is pretty bad in GPS.
“And the second thing is, I’ve known Sergio for a long time. Would a driver really put his car in the wall and risk his gearbox?
“And the way it was done, you could be going all the way to the back of the grid with such an incident. If you want to park your car you do it in a different way. And we had enough PR crises in the last couple of weeks around that team, we don’t need another one.”
McLaren’s Zak Brown also shrugged off the suggestion of an investigation, arguing it was too long after Monaco to do so.
“It was quite some time ago, so I think we need to, as a sport, if we see something that needs to be investigated move more swiftly,” said Brown.
“Monaco was a long time ago and to be talking about Monaco and Abu Dhabi [2021], I think that train’s left the station.”
Brown is pushing for an IndyCar-style change of regs whereby a driver would lose their best time should they cause a red flag, and potentially even yellow flags, in qualifying.
Sainz has also lobbied for such a rule change, suggesting on Thursday – but stressing he wasn’t talking about the Perez incident specifically – that deliberate incidents have happened in F1 and that they should be dealt with in such a way.
“It should be red flags or yellow flags – effectively impeding a driver from completing the lap,” said Brown of the potential rule change he had also suggested.
“They do that in other forms of motorsports where the penalty is you just lose your fastest lap from that session. All the drivers tend to do one-lap runs so that would penalise the driver if it was intentional or unintentional, right? You’ve messed up someone else’s lap so I think that’s an easy solution, can be implemented right away.
“If you cause a driver to have to back out, you lose your lap, you’ve got to go again and maybe you won’t have a chance, maybe you will or you’ll have to use another set of tyres. I think that’s the easiest way to solve it.”
Wolff also backed the proposal to consider a way to delete lap times should a driver cause an incident in qualifying.
