Ferrari: No need to speculate after controversial tweet

Ferrari has attempted to ease the backlash from its controversial tweet which blamed Max Verstappen for crashing into Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel to see the three retire on the opening lap of the Singapore Grand Prix.

Haydn Cobb_1

18 Sep 2017

Ferrari: No need to speculate after controversial tweet

After a stewards investigation into the clash ruled that no one driver was to blame by calling it a racing incident, all three drivers escaped punishment having failed to score at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

But the clash was sparked into further controversy when Ferrari’s official twitter account placed the blame solely on Verstappen – something fervently denied by both Verstappen and Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

“I don’t think it was a racing incident,” Verstappen said. “At the end of the day they take a total of three cars and I was in the middle without doing anything wrong. I was just trying to have a clean start.”

“How on earth you can work that out from watching that, I have no idea,” Horner said. “Anyone who can blame Verstappen out of that needs their eyes tested.”

According to Ferrari, the tweet which has fanned the flames on the controversy was not posted by the team’s head of communications but someone in the Ferrari garage who wasn’t officially endorsed by the team.

Despite this, Ferrari have kept the tweet on their feed while responding, “What we tweeted was a factual description of events. No need to speculate on this.”

Ferrari has compounded the controversy by refusing to give a public account on the incident with both Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel avoiding a direct response while team boss Maurizio Arrivabene left the circuit before making an official comment.It was the first time in Ferrari's F1 history that it has suffered a double DNF on the opening lap of a Grand Prix, while it was the first double retirement for the Italian manufacturer since the 2015 Mexican Grand Prix.