FIA 'shame' for 'wrong decision' after 300KPH F1 collision

Former Ferrari general manager Peter Windsor has said that the FIA should carry 'shame' for not taking any action over an incident involving Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

At the recent Spanish Grand Prix, Leclerc and Verstappen collided on the start-finish straight after a safety car restart, although the touch did not cause damage to either star's car.

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It happened at high speed as Leclerc was overtaking Verstappen, and the Dutchman was furious on his team radio, although later got distracted by an incident involving George Russell, where he appeared to intentionally drive into the Brit.

While Verstappen received a 10-second penalty for his move on Russell, no further action was taken for the collision with Leclerc, even though both drivers were called to see the stewards.

The official statement put out by race stewards at the time read: "Both drivers were of the view that this was an avoidable collision and could potentially have resulted in a major crash, but neither driver was wholly or predominantly to blame. In the circumstances, we took no further action."

However, after that, Leclerc admitted that he had meant to push Verstappen over to the left, so that he would not get a slipstream from the two McLaren drivers ahead of them.

It was those comments that spiked Windsor's ire, with the pundit explaining on his YouTube channel about the incident at over 300kph: "Even more shame then on the FIA for not doing anything about it," he said.

"If Charles is now saying 'well yeah it was basically me', the FIA are wrong then in their assessment, which was that both drivers caused an unavoidable collision, and that's wrong.

"They should be correcting that now and apologising, and they should be taking some sort of action, because that is inexcusable, I keep saying 300+kph."

GPFans have contacted the FIA for comment on the matter, although it is FIA-appointed race stewards that made the decision in the aftermath of the race not to penalise either driver.

Windsor pleads with FIA to take action

Windsor doubled down on his criticism for FIA race stewards, in a passionate statement about quite how serious the incident could have been for the two drivers.

"The worst accidents we can have in Formula 1 now are gonna be on the straight, because there's less run-off area, there's no real protection on the barriers, and they're very very high speed.

"That's why this needs to be jumped upon," Windsor continued. "And I think now that we know Charles has said that, and he's correct to apologise, something needs to be done."

Windsor's comments came in the week following the Spanish GP, and as of yet there has been no sign of a switching of the FIA race stewards' initial stance on the matter.

Verstappen will undoubtedly have lots of questions to answer about the events of the end of the race in Spain during media day for the Canadian GP, and the Leclerc incident may just be one sore subject for the four-time world champion.

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