Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez had been doing a really good job throughout the whole race, with Sainz keeping up with his teammate Leclerc, who was battling for the win and Perez having better pace than Verstappen for the first time this season.

However, it all came to nought in the penultimate lap of the race. 

Heading into the lap 50 Sainz managed to pass Leclerc for second place but it didn’t take long and the Monagasque driver took his place back. Sainz then tried to hold onto the third place, ahead of Perez they made contact on the exit of Turn 2, turning both cars straight into the wall on the left side of the track and ending both of their races.

Sainz sounded confused on the radio asking his engineer ‘what happened’, while Perez was furious and called the Spanish driver ‘an idiot’ straight away.

The Ferrari driver explained his point of view to F1.com after the race.

"I was attacking Charles into Turn 2 and then I exited Turn 2," Sainz explained.

"Checo [Perez] was on my left. We normally do a slight drift towards the left into the long straight, which I did like every other lap, and suddenly for some reason I don’t understand, Checo and I collided, which is unfortunate and also very disappointing.

“My feeling today is honestly I did nothing wrong, I didn’t do any erratic maneuver, put him against the wall or anything like that. We were just, like every other lap, drifting a bit, a tiny, tiny little bit towards the left because that’s where the racing line is and we just touched. It is what it is.”

“We’ve spoken already,” the Ferrari driver added. 

“[But] we need to analyse. I’m not someone who wants to put  blame on either an excuse or put blame on another driver. It’s racing, everything happens super-fast.”

Perez also put his version on the table.

“I felt that exiting Turn 2, there was plenty of room between both cars, and within a metre or two, we ended up makingcontact,” said Perez.

“It’s very unfortunate. It all happened so quickly. I think Carlos was trying to follow the tow from Charles as he went to the inside and that really made things really hard.

“I think we had the pace to fight for the victory today, so we just have to keep it up and hopefully in the coming races, coming weekends, we can be really strong,” the Mexican driver added.

Regardless of both driver’s opinions, the steward’s decision is clear. It was a racing incident and no further actions will be held.