Past teammates Massa and Alonso disagree after Austin collision

Former Ferrari teammates Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso had different views over their clash in the late stages of Sunday’s US GP at Circuit of The Americas in Austin – but neither man was penalized by the FIA after a post-race enquiry.

Alonso dived down the inside of Massa as the pair battled for sixth place and, when Massa turned in, contact was made. The McLaren driver went on to pass Carlos Sainz to claim fifth with, while Massa finished seventh after a last-lap pit stop with a puncture made no difference to his result.

“To be honest I was just doing the corner,” said Massa. “He was diving in, he hit my tires, and I had a puncture. It was a shame for what happened, because the race was going a fantastic way. I was really unlucky at the beginning, I was nine seconds in front, and because of the Virtual Safety Car I came back behind. And then I had this problem at the end. I’m sure the responsibility is on Fernando’s side.”

“I still think the same thing as when I did the maneuver,” said Alonso. “I was side-by-side, it’s not that I was one quarter of my car alongside him or something like that, half of my car was already in front. It was a race incident.

“It was a difficult race, we were struggling with pace all the weekend, also in the race we were not too fast, so we could not overtake the Toro Rosso in the middle stint. At the end we had a tire advantage, we were with the medium, they were with the soft we had better degradation.

“Obviously with Felipe it was different, because on the straights the Williams are very fast, so we need to overtake him in slow speed corners with an aggressive move, while with the Toro Rosso, opening the DRS was enough to past Carlos.”