Perez hits out at ‘very stupid’ driving by Gasly

Sergio Perez has expressed his anger at Pierre Gasly’s aggressive defensive driving which caused the former to crash late in the race.

The Racing Point driver was making a late charge to get multiple points when he tried passing Gasly around the outside of Turn 2 and was hit by the Frenchman, causing him to spin and crash out.

Due to an error in the timing system, the race ended a lap early and Perez was therefore classified in P9, but before discovering this, he hit out at Gasly.

“I think [it was] an unnecessary touch,” Perez told Motorsport.com.

“[I] was ahead, gave him enough room, if you see his car is not even on the kerb, on fresh tyres, last lap of the race, I think it was very stupid what he did.

“And he got away with it. I think he was very lucky, but he could’ve ruined his race and lost the points.

“There’s a point where you’ve got to accept that you’ve lost the position. That manoeuvre, Ricciardo did it to me twice – if I kept going, I would’ve done the same [accident].”

Video Pierre Gasly colliding with Sergio Perez in the last lap of the race! #JapaneseGP #Formula1 #F1 pic.twitter.com/f4pu22Lrcm

— Sophia (@sophia_wrc) October 13, 2019

Gasly meanwhile, said he expected to be given more space, but wanted to see the incident again before assigning blame.

“I want to see first if I could’ve done something different or if he could’ve done something different before blaming anyone,” Gasly said.

“I saw he was there, I expected a bit more space, but as I said, I don’t want to blame him for anything, I first want to see the footage and just review everything.”

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