Marko: Lawson more to blame than Perez

One of the stories following last weekend's Formula 1 race in Mexico City was the clash between Lawson and Perez, the latter's Red Bull Racing seat under threat while the former is one of the candidates to replace him should the team decide to make some difficult decisions.

Perez had a terrible qualifying and started the race from 18th on the grid, and despite getting a five-second time penalty due to a false start, he was making decent progress up the field, that is, until he reached the VCARB of Lawson, who was not willing to make life easy for the #11 Red Bull.

What followed was a tough clash that saw Perez incur damage on his RB20, which meant its performance was compromised for the rest of the race, which he finished last.

Naturally, Perez was unimpressed with Lawson, saying he lacked the proper attitude to be in F1 and that he needed to be more humble.

However, the Kiwi was adamant he did nothing wrong; he said: "I don’t know where he wanted me to go. I gave him space at [Turn] 4, he came in super late.

"At that point of the race we had just got some clean air and honestly our pace wasn’t bad so I’m not just going to get out of his way.

"I gave him space in [Turn] 4, he drove me off and then didn’t give me space in [Turn] 5. I was on the lock–stop trying to turn the corner and avoid a collision but I had nowhere to go. It’s frustrating, it wasn’t my intention," he maintained.

What made matters worse was that Lawson gave Perez the middle finger when he overtook him later in the lap when they clashed.

"It's obviously one of those in the moment things," he said when asked about his inappropriate behavior. "He spent half the lap blocking me, trying to ruin my race, so I was upset.

"But it's not an excuse. I shouldn't have done it, and I apologise for that," he admitted.

The judge on the whole matter was Marko, who commented on the clash between the drivers of Red Bull's sister teams; he told ORF: "[It was] an unnecessary collision, where I see Lawson as being more to blame.

"If it had been someone else, yes. But not the sister team," was the Austrian's response when asked if Lawson getting his elbows out was a good thing.

As for Lawson, he admitted the Red Bull bosses were not impressed with how things went down; he commented: "I don't think that's what Helmut likes. It's not my character, not something you should be doing."