Pierre Gasly has condemned the driving style of rival Kevin Magnussen after laying the blame of causing a collision during the closing stages of Azerbaijan Grand Prix as the two battled for the final point on offer.
Ultimately both drivers finished outside the points thanks to the turn twenty incident, which saw the Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda driver pushed into the wall by the Haas F1 Team racer at high speed, which saw the STR13 sustain damage to the steering and mirror.
Gasly feels Magnussen is the ‘most dangerous’ competitor he has ever had to race with, and he was highly critical of the move to push him into the wall whilst running at more than 300 kilometres per hour.
“Kevin is the most dangerous guy I have ever raced with. He literally put me in the wall at 300kph at the restart and completely ruined the race,” said Gasly on Crash.
“I would have been in the worst case P10 at the last restart. I was going to pass him just before the Safety Car Line 1, went on the side, and he just put me in the wall right in the middle and took half of my floor out.
“Both my front wheels went in the air, broke my right mirror and bent my steering as well. After that I was just trying to survive until the end of the race. There was almost no point to race after that.”
Gasly revealed Magnussen informed him that he did not see the Frenchman due to extreme vibrations on his VF-18, remnants of earlier contact, which made looking in his mirrors virtually impossible, but for the Frenchman, he disputes this theory and insists the Dane knew just what he was doing.
“Honestly I don’t care about all this,” insisted the Frenchman. “At some point safety, and at 300kph, he did all the race like this. I knew exactly what he was doing, and he put me in the wall.
“He’s been always like this. He’s been always racing hard. I don’t mind racing drivers which are hard, but like this is just way over the limit. You don’t put someone in the wall at 300kph.”
Gasly looked at his own penalty for spinning around team-mate Brendon Hartley during the previous round in China in comparison to what Magnussen did to him in Baku, and he questioned why the penalties were similar even though what happened this weekend was more extreme.
“Looking at what I had in China which was a completely different situation, and looking at what he did now, that’s ridiculous,” said Gasly. “This guy should have half the points of the licence removed.”
