Bahrain Grand Prix 2013: Perez was too aggressive, says Button

McLaren's Jenson Button hit out at team-mate, Sergio Perez on Sunday following the 2013 F1 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Button eventually finished in tenth place after rear tyre degradation forced him to switch to a four-stop strategy late on.

However his main beef, at least immediately after the race, was with Perez - and their skirmishes on track, certainly didn't amuse the Englishman, who at one point told the McLaren pit wall over the radio to 'calm him down'

"I was vocal on the radio and emotions were running high but I will say exactly what I said then: the racing out there was great fun but Checo was too aggressive," Button told Sky Sports F1. "At 300 kilometres an hour you don't expect your team-mate to come alongside and bang wheels with you. So that was a bit of a surprise and I'm probably not the only one feels like that."

Later on though, and having had a chance to calm down himself, the 2009 F1 world champion was not quite so critical.

"I didn't feel it was the cleanest racing with Checo and myself. I think it is great that we are allowed to race [by McLaren] and that is fantastic. But into Turn Four we were wheel banging and that's not normally the way I like to race. Fairplay though to Checo he had a great race and scored some great points for the team. That is what we will take away from the weekend."

As for his own afternoon, Button admitted it wasn't the best: "Today wasn't brilliant for me," he continued. "Okay, the race was a lot of fun, but I didn't get the result I wanted. I used up my tyres fending off Checo. There was a lot of action out there, and as I say I wasn't really able to conserve my tyres as a result. That was partly because I had to work my way back through after my second pitstop, when I'd been fighting with Romain [Grosjean] too.

"But there was a lot of clean racing out there - although as I say Checo was a bit tough, which was a little unusual."

Perez himself meanwhile later conceded he had probably taken things too far and that banging wheels was 'a little too risky' [see separate story].