A furious Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene held nothing back in his rant at Mercedes. His comments came on the back of accusations of deliberate foul play at Silverstone.

Ferrari and Mercedes have already been in an altercation in Austria a week ago. So when Kimi Raikkonen tagged Lewis Hamilton into a spin at Silverstone, flared tempers were inevitable.

“To word it like James Allison, was it deliberate or incompetence?” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said.

Sebastian Vettel re-inherited the championship lead after winning at Silverstone. Even he called the accusations of deliberate Ferrari sabotage “silly”.

Arrivabene, on the other hand, had a far more explosive reaction.

“Who is incompetent? Kimi? Who is he to judge what the drivers are doing in the car? If he really said something like that, he should be ashamed,” he said.

“Allison worked at Maranello for many years, but now we are here in England teaching him to be a gentleman.

“I accept it from Jacques Villeneuve because he was a driver. But this guy?”

Choosing to play the casual observer card, Red Bull’s Christian Horner said that the “tension” will make this an intense championship fight.

“When you have that growing tension, speculation is unavoidable when these incidents occur,” he said.

“But I believe it’s nothing more than a racing incident. I would be surprised if there was anything else or if Kimi is that kind of driver.”

Mercedes’s Valtteri Bottas also tried to water down the incident and the accusations. “We are always racing closely with Ferrari and there can always be contact,” he said.

But, Mercedes team chairman Niki Lauda commented: “The accident was just unfair. It was the second time a Ferrari has hit us in the first corner. That’s not funny.”

Hopefully, things should smooth down by the time the German GP arrives in 2 weeks’ time