Valencia winner Felipe Massa believes Adrian Sutil was responsible for the near-collision in the pit lane which resulted in some anxious moments for the Ferrari driver as he awaited the outcome of a stewards' inquiry.
Massa took a commanding win in the inaugural Valencia race from McLaren rival Lewis Hamilton, but the result was thrown into doubt after the stewards announced that they would conduct a post-race investigation into the pit lane incident.
Massa pointed the finger at Sutil in the post-race press conference, suggesting it was futile of the German not to let him by since, as a lapped driver, he would soon have to cede position anyway.
Watch Massa press conference clip
“I think it wasn’t very clever from his side, because even if he got out in front of me he would need to let me by, so it was a little bit of a shame to fight with him in the pit lane,” he said.
“I stopped behind him on the pit stop and we left together. So when he was passing me by I was leaving the garage, so we were side-by-side.
“But, I mean, I was the leader and he was a lapped car…”
Massa added that the pair only avoided contact because he backed off – a point that is likely to have been central to Ferrari’s representations to the stewards.
“I came very close to [colliding with him], so I needed to back off, and for sure I lost a lot of time,” he said.
“Fortunately the gap [to Hamilton] was enough.
“It was quite narrow, the wall was getting closer and closer, so I didn’t want to take any risks.”
For his part, Sutil insisted he hadn’t seen Massa coming as he accelerated down the pit lane and had done his best first to avoid contact and then to let the Ferrari past as soon as possible.
“Well I didn’t see him,” Sutil told ITV Sport's Louise Goodman.
“I was driving down the pit lane and suddenly a car came there.
“I went to the left a little bit, and then after the first corner I tried to let him past as soon as possible.”
Sutil declined to blame Ferrari for releasing Massa into his path, saying he would prefer to see a replay of the incident before commenting further.
“In the pits everybody is in a rush to do everything as fast as possible,” he said.
“We’ve seen it many times in races that sometimes cars go out side-by-side.
“For sure the guy on the pit stop should look before releasing the car, but I want to see it on TV and then I can give a better statement.”
Massa’s engineer Rob Smedley dismissed any suggestion that his driver had done anything wrong and said attention should focus instead on the quality of his race performance.
“We released him and he backed off,” Smedley told Ted Kravitz.
“It was nothing to do with him. We have to consider what happened.
“But I’d rather not talk about that now, to be honest, I’d rather talk about the fact that the kid’s done a fantastic race.
“He’s driven absolutely fantastically, so I’d rather not talk about silly little incidents like that.”
