Haas driver Kevin Magnussen has revealed that Alpine’s Esteban Ocon joked with him about exaggerating his damage to gain a position at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Magnussen had started the race in fifth ahead of team-mate Mick Schumacher and Ocon, and behind the Mercedes of Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The Dane went side-by-side with Hamilton into Turn Three and, for the second time this season, they made contact.
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This time, there was a lot less damage than there was in Barcelona, but the 29-year-old was left with a piece of endplate dangling from his wing.
Ocon warned over the radio that there was a risk of the part falling off and hitting him in the head, prompting the stewards to give Magnussen a black and orange flag, forcing the Haas driver to come into the pits and change his front wing.
He stayed out on the set of Hards he pitted onto for the rest of the race, eventually finishing 17th and last of the classified runners.
Ocon went to Magnussen after the race and quipped that he made the damage out to be worse than it was, with which the former McLaren and Renault driver took no issue.
Instead, he blames the FIA for being too easily led by drivers instead of making their own decisions.
“I was just talking to Ocon now and he was joking how he told the FIA that it was really bad,” Magnussen said, quoted by Autosport.
“If you know you can influence the FIA like that, you’re going to do it, aren’t you? Which he sort of did, and fair play.
“But you’ve got to let us drive with that sh*t, it’s nothing. I just had a bit of contact, nothing serious. Scratched my front wing a little bit and then was told to pit.
“The car was fine, the front wing was safe, it was not broken off.
“Think back to Jeddah last year, Lewis Hamilton won the race with half a front wing [after contact with Max Verstappen], which I think is correct. Let us race if we can.
“It feels like suddenly very different. In Monaco they don’t start us because it started drizzling, and then here I’m called in because I have a scratch on my front wing.”
Magnussen was running in 12th after the rest of the stops had shaken out amid a Safety Car caused by Yuki Tsunoda.
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He eventually succumbed to the age of his tyres though, and was sent all the way to the back of the pack.
“We tried to do the rest of the race on one set of Hards [which was] always going to be difficult,” explained Magnussen.
“You’re still trying to fight your way into the points, you never know what can happen, so you’re pushing as hard as you can. Nothing came out of it today, but we’ll try again next time.”
Schumacher would also walk away from the race empty-handed after he suffered a reliability failure while running in the top 10.