K-Mag tells Perez: You move off line, I go

Kevin Magnussen has denied Sergio Perez’s claims he broke a gentleman’s agreement leading to their Singapore Grand Prix practice clash.

Thinking Perez was “pitting, or letting me by, or something”, Magnussen tried to pass him at the exit of the final chicane.

Perez, though, wasn’t letting him through and instead squeezed the Haas driver into the wall.

The stewards handed him a reprimand for his “potentially dangerous” actions.

Magnussen felt it was a bit lenient but as it happened in a practice session concedes it didn’t have major consequences.

“We spoke at the stewards,” he told Autosport. “We spoke a little bit afterwards, because one thing is what he said at the stewards, and one thing is what I think is the…truth.

“I don’t care. I don’t want to make a big fuss, and I’m not going to appeal too much to the stewards for a penalty for something that happened in practice and had no real consequence.”

Perez and Kmag had a incident for track position – FP2 #SingaporeGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/yqebPvh7r3

— Eau rouge (@Insidef1) September 20, 2019

Giving his version of how things played out, the Dane said: “I went on the power, and when I was on the side of him he closed the door and I hit the wall.

“I don’t know what was his perspective, I don’t know if he went off-line by accident because he was focusing on something else or whatever.

“But he did go off the line. I just stayed on the line and went on power to start the lap and got pushed into the wall.”

Explaining the gentleman’s agreement, Magnussen revealed “you don’t attack the guy in front”.

“But,” he added, “he moves off the line, and you go. You’re not going to ask, ‘are you sure?’. You go.”

Follow all the action from the Singapore Grand Prix with the PlanetF1 live centre