Adrian Sutil said his race-ending collision with Pastor Maldonado on lap one was not the first time the Williams driver has caused such an accident.
“We have many incidents with this driver and for sure maybe you have to have an emergency area around him to avoid this kind of things,” Sutil told reporters after the race.
“It’s always hard to say whose fault is it but I was on my line and I didn’t do any crazy moves or so,” Sutil explained.
“There was a lot of space on the left, lot of space on the right. Again, I don’t understand why someone is so close to a car and then actually hit you.
“It’s not that we were side by side it was probably with his right-front tyre on my left-rear axle and just touch it. It was a little touch but at 300 [kph] you don’t want to have that thing and I spun. I lost my race because of that.”
Maldonado blamed Sutil for the collision, saying: “On the first lap I was on the inside and he crossed a bit my line.”
“He did a big crash, was quite risky, but it’s racing, you know, sometimes can happen, especially when you are recovering places.”
Sutil said the crash was a disappointing end to a weekend which started to go wrong during qualifying.
“Friday, Saturday morning it all looked really good. It was a long time that we were actually that strong Friday and Saturday practice. in the top ten.
“And then qualifying, my brake failure the first little hit and I couldn’t make it into Q2 for that problem. We fixed the brakes, we had a good car I believe for the race and good start, made up some positions.
“But then for some reason I got hit on a straight from Maldonado on my left-rear tyre and I just lost control completely. He spun me around and I crashed into the barrier which is a shame because it’s a very wide track here and no reason to actually collide on a straight line.”
2013 United States Grand Prix
Image ?? Force India
BasCB (@bascb)
17th November 2013, 22:22
Maldonado also blaimed the FI driver in Spa, didn’t he?
The funny part is that those first paragraphs actually seem eerily similar to what Trulli had to say about Sutil right before he pulled out his now infamous pictures!
OmarR-Pepper (@)
17th November 2013, 22:42
@bascb what pictures?
BasCB (@bascb)
17th November 2013, 22:49
There was an episode where they crashed, and blamed each other for it. Trulli actually brought footage and pictures with him to the drivers press conference the next race “proving” that is was really Sutil to blame for that.
Its a couple of years back now (Trulli was still at Toyota)
RAMBOII
17th November 2013, 22:51
Brasil 2009 it was, they discussed it in Abu Dhabi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfRVctse_KQ
BJ (@beejis60)
18th November 2013, 0:01
I forgot about that, thank you for this. Wish we could have a like or upvote button as you would receive it here.
BasCB (@bascb)
18th November 2013, 11:30
Thank you for posting the video RAMBOII, always nice to rewatch some comedy Press conferences!
The way Alonso cannot stop laughing, and even Kimi’s mouth seems to be twitching for a laugh, a moment to remember!
Strontium (@strontium)
18th November 2013, 17:00
To be fair the Trulli incident was Trulli’s fault.
This one was Sutil’s of course. I have lost most respect for Sutil over this season. He has been slow.
Anyway, accidents happen.
toiago (@toiago)
17th November 2013, 22:24
Can’t really decide who was at fault in this incident. How could I or anyone else? The director didn’t even bother to show an onboard replay of it…
foleyger (@foleyger)
17th November 2013, 22:24
agreed. It is hard to judge
Mike Dee (@mike-dee)
18th November 2013, 16:07
Agree. I thought it looked like Maldonado turned into Sutil but it was from such a poor angle that you can’t really tell.
They might not have had onboards. I read here recently that they only have 16 (?) channels available at any time so they probably cover the top 10 at all times, which means they can only have half of the remainder of the field. I agree though that there should have been one of the two cars involved or one of the cars following them, which would have had a camera available.
Strontium (@strontium)
18th November 2013, 17:01
The director was useless.
Wheel to wheel Alonso and Hulkenberg got cut off to watch Ricciardo through turn 1.
Jungmeister
17th November 2013, 22:54
“He did a big crash, was quite risky, but it’s racing, you know, sometimes can happen, especially when you are recovering places.”
To me it sounds like he doesn’t care. He doesn’t respect his rivals and always blames everybody but himself and then goes on to claim he isn’t going to change anything because this is his style….. A rather poor driver imho.
Force Maikel (@force-maikel)
17th November 2013, 23:11
It looked like they bashed wheels and that Sutil was bounced into the barrier, still the director decided not to show us a proper onboard view so it’s difficult to tell what really happen let alone blame anyone.
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
17th November 2013, 23:13
By the looks of the angle we were given I’d say it was Sutil’s fault.
bull mello (@bullmello)
18th November 2013, 0:10
@vettel1 – From what we saw, I would have to agree. No love lost for Maldonado, but fair is fair. He has had plenty of obvious incidents that were clearly his fault, Spa for example. It looked like Sutil just didn’t see him and they came together while Maldonado was pretty much holding his line. I would be willing to change my opinion given further information like decent on board views.
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
18th November 2013, 0:14
I feel exactly the same way @bullmello: my opinion based on the FOM feed was Sutil moved across not recognising Maldonado was on his inside, but I will wait to see an onboard of Pastor to see if he steers.
bull mello (@bullmello)
18th November 2013, 1:48
@vettel1 – And I guess it is worth noting the stewards did not weigh in on this incident.
Sharon H (@sharoncom)
18th November 2013, 9:29
I thought Sutil should be following his own recommendation of setting up an ’emergency area’ around Maldonado. It’s not like he didn’t have plenty of room on his other side.
uan (@uan)
18th November 2013, 19:39
@bullmello @vettel1
Apparently Sutil said he did know Pastor was there. In fact Ant Davidson on the SkyPad initially put blame more on Maldonado, then when he heard Sutil knew Pastor was there, he changed his mind.
It’s easy to bust on Pastor already, no reason to pile on and give Sutil a pass for what was his own fault.
George (@george)
18th November 2013, 0:30
@vettel1 Yeah looked to me like Sutil came across
Beto (@chebeto0)
18th November 2013, 9:53
@vettel1 I also think Sutil was t fault this time, though it’s hard to say. But I believe Sutil’s comments are more against the competition in the driver market than against the driver that “made him crash”.
James_mc (@james_mc)
17th November 2013, 23:50
“
”
Makes me inclined to think that he is at fault as he’s used this statement in the past in incidents which he should have been assigned significant (if not all) culpability for.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
17th November 2013, 23:51
Considering the straight isn’t really straight and it goes to the right a bit, and the lame footage we got from the incident, it seemed as if Sutil didn’t follow the curvature of the straight and didn’t/couldn’t see Maldonado on his left.
It looked like Sutil’s fault, but who knows, really… I LOL’ed when the guys at Sky said it was the first first lap retirement for Sutil since Brazil 2009 and I remembered that incident with Trulli that went on for weeks :P.
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
17th November 2013, 23:53
The wording seems to imply a degree of certainty that Maldonado was at fault, which I don’t think is a fair assessment of the situation unless you have some other camera angles to judge that.
Christian (@nightingale)
18th November 2013, 0:13
Maybe Pastor just wanted to #FeelTheForce ;)
Tim Edwards (@timpey)
18th November 2013, 9:52
To me it looked like Sutil was a fault. He has loads of room and should have carried on following the “straight” round to the right. A clumsy mistake and unfair to bring up the “Maldonardo” excuse in my opinion. A lazy cheap shot similar to a lot of what was going on with Grojean last year.
Maldonaro didnt go himself any favours in the media this weekend either though.