Force India: You've got to give your teammate room

Not for the first time, the pink cars collided with Ocon tapped by teammate Perez which sent him into the wall. The FIA stewards deemed it a racing incident.

Later in the race, Perez did himself no favours later when he deliberately swerved into the Williams of Sergey Sirotkin, he admitted "frustration" in his duel with the Russian and as a result punted his car as the pair battled side by side.

Perez was given a drive-through penalty for his unsavoury antics, but many fans and indeed sections of the F1 paddock are up in arms with regards to his tactics.

Asked about the incident after the race, Perez said, "It's a very unfortunate. As I'm picking up the power I get a clip from one car and I didn’t know it was Esteban. I was very sorry for that, it's a big heart ache for us."

"I don’t think I have much to say. I'm just very sorry for the team in general. I wish I could’ve seen Esteban there or have done something differently. It was a tough day for us especially after a good day yesterday but this is racing and hopefully we can improve in the next few races to get some points."

With regards to the Sirotkin swerve, Perez said, "I closed the door earlier than I should have so I have to double check but I think the penalty was fair. It was hard racing, he was defending his position very hard, fighting very hard, moving a lot under braking and a lot of lock-ups under braking."

"And then as I was going through him, I tried to close the door but I think he was too close. In the end not ideal. It was very costly, but I don't think it would have changed anything on my result."

"I knew my race was going out of my hands, it was so hard to overtake. I was just burning my brakes, my engine, my tyres, so it was a massive frustration," explained the Mexican.

Ocon would not be drawn into the debate and told reporters, “I’m not going to comment or analyse what happened. I got a great start and had a good opportunity with good grip to go around Checo and the next thing I felt was a hit and I was in the wall.

“What I am going to analyse is that we had great pace the whole weekend. It was supposed to be a great weekend for both of us and right now I’m talking and the race is going on and we are going to come out of this with zero points and that’s terrible,” added the Frenchman.

Team chief Otmar Szafnauer was not happy, "It's unacceptable for them to come together like that in an area where there's no run-off room. If it's your team-mate, you've got to give them room."

"It’s been over a year since it happened. It was at Baku last year that we instilled the rules it was at Spa. From Spa until here it hasn’t happened."

"So we’re back to the old rules. We allowed them to race on lap one whereas in the past we didn’t allow them to race on lap one and now we can remove that."

"And if they continue to do this, even on lap one there’s other ways to separate them which we hope that we don’t ever have to employ," added Szafanuer.