Kevin Magnussen and Kimi Raikkonen nearly came together in Q3 of the French Grand Prix. Magnussen was on his flying lap, while Raikkonen was getting ready for his final flying lap.
Even though Magnussen completed his lap, he only came out P9, behind the Sauber of Charles Leclerc. Immediately he released his frustration on the radio. “What the f*** is he doing?” he was heard shouting on the radio.
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“He f***ed all his laps, he had fuel for I don’t know how many laps, everyone else has fuel for one lap, so to begin with I thought he would box because he f***ed his lap,” Magnussen said in anger.
“And then he tries again immediately the lap after. Overtakes us, backed off again – then surely he is going to box. But then he tries again,” he continued. “So it is three laps in a row that he tried to push and it makes no sense. There is no way to predict what he is going to do.”
“And then he obviously overtakes me into Turn 1, and f***s my lap, and doesn’t even complete his lap,” the Haas driver added. “I don’t know if what he did is against the rule, but surely he is impossible to predict.
“And also he is stopping at Turn 14, then he is pushing, then he is stopping, that is erratic driving in my mind, but I don’t know if it is in the stewards’ mind,”
“It’s frustrating what happened. I don’t think it was necessary,” Magnussen said.
“I think he just had no idea what to do and he was desperate to get a lap, he hadn’t done a lap, he f**ked all his laps. He was desperate.”
The stewards on the other hand were firm that Raikkonen did nothing wrong by not giving him a penalty.
“The Stewards examined video evidence of the incident and the radio communication of both drivers concerned,” said the FIA in a statement.
“There is no doubt that the ‘push’ lap of car 20 was thwarted by the proximity of Car 7 which overtook car 20 just after it had started the lap. This was the last opportunity for each driver to achieve a fast lap in Q3.
“The Stewards noted that the driver of car 20 was unsure of the intentions of the driver of car 7 during the last half of the previous lap, where car 20 was on an ‘out’ lap and car 7 had aborted a push lap. Car 7 did slow towards the end of that lap but when compared to [sic] a previous out lap in Q3, there was a similar pattern of slowing in the same area.
“The Stewards are not of the view that the driver of car 7 ‘unnecessarily impeded’ car 20 (refer Article 31.5 of the Formula One Sporting Regulations).
