Hamilton: Sirotkin incident was 'disrespectful'

Lewis Hamilton has called Sergey Sirotkin's actions during qualifying in Brazil "disrespectful". The two were nearly involved in a huge collision at the start of Q2, as Hamilton attempted to get out of the way of the Russian.

Both drivers were on out laps and were about to set their first fast laps of the session. Hamilton backed off approaching the final corner in order to create a gap to the cars ahead, However, Sirotkin sped up on approach to the corner, catching Hamilton out.

The Briton moved to the left to try and get out of the way, but so did Sirotkin who was trying to avoid the five-time world champion. Speaking after the session, Hamilton gave his point of view and insisted that he did nothing wrong.

"Everyone was on an out lap, me, Sergey and the one in front of me. When you're on an out lap, towards the end of the lap, you try to back off and get a gap," he said. "As far as I knew no one behind was on a lap so I was making sure I had a gap, then all of a sudden out of turn 11 I saw a car coming. 

"I thought someone might have been on a lap, so I went to the left and that's where he decided to go. But he wasn't on a lap so I don't really know what his thinking was. Between all the drivers, we all know to keep our space by that point so it was generally quite a disrespectful move.

"I was trying to get out of his way and then he got to the corner and slowed up. It was kind of strange, it was completely unnecessary because he had space behind. Ultimately his lap and my lap weren't great. Hopefully he can learn from it."