Sergio Perez “shaky” after crash, ‘surprised’ Kevin Magnussen wasn’t penalised

Sergio Perez says he was left “a little bit shaky” after his heavy-impact crash on the first lap of the F1 Monaco Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver was sent spinning into the barriers by Kevin Magnussen after the pair made contact on the run up the hill to Massenet on the opening lap of Sunday’s race, with Nico Hulkenberg also taken out in the melee which resulted in a lengthy red flag period.

Perez was checked over at the medical centre following the violent crash but confirmed he was okay.

“It was a little bit shaky from me. It was quite a heavy impact,” Perez said.

“If you see my onboard at no point, you see Kevin’s car not even close to me, alongside me, and you could see that the wall is just getting closer and closer and to keep it flat out. There was only one way out of it.

“And it was either contact with my car, with the barrier, there were just simply no room for both cars. And at some point he had to realise that, you know, I’ve been in that location and many times when you are the car behind, you just have to realise that it’s time to back off, before things get closer to you.”

When informed that Magnussen said Perez should have left him more room, the Mexican replied: “I think he clearly shouldn’t be there in first place because there is just one way to get out of that, where it will be just to hit the wall, he either hit the wall or hit my car.

“So how does he want me to leave him room if he is not even alongside, you know. There’s a point where you see the wall is coming to you and you just have to back off. It has happened to me many times and there is a point where you just have to back off.”

Perez said he is “very surprised” the incident did not get investigated and felt Magnussen deserved a penalty.

“I’m very surprised because the amount of damage and how dangerous the damage was, I’m fairly surprised,” he said. “We need to ask for a reason why it’s not been investigated because without an investigation we don’t get a reason why it wasn’t a penalty.

“I’m really surprised. I think I got the lap one, let them race, but I think this was more dangerous driving just to keep it flat out knowing that they were going to come contact at some point. I think that was some dangerous driving.” 

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “I was surprised it wasn't investigated because it was quite a hefty incident. 

"Given he had a wheel up the inside in a part of the track that only ever narrows, you would have expected him to back out, not only has he destroyed Checo's race and the car he's also destroyed his teammates race, so not very clever.”