Motorsport Debrief: A tale of toxic teammates

Hi, this is Motorsport.com’s Global Editor-in-Chief Charles Bradley and I hope you’re well. Let’s take a high-speed look back at yesterday’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps – and one story dominated away from the Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel duel for victory.

Force India duo hits fresh intra-team meltdown low

One of the great running jokes in slapstick cinema was Peter Sellers’ brilliant Pink Panther character Inspector Jacques Clouseau being attacked by his manservant Cato – who would leap out and attack him when he was least expecting it. But you always knew it was coming…

Right now, I’m not sure whether Sergio Perez or Esteban Ocon is Clouseau or Cato at Force India? Spa was worse than Baku, as the pink panthers collided not once but twice on Sunday.

What made this worse was both collisions occurred at high speed, at one of the least sanitised sections of the Belgian Grand Prix venue. I’ve stood on the ‘old’ pitwall as F1 cars flash past north of 150mph, and banging wheels and wings there is simply insane – especially when it’s your own teammate!

I’m just glad the flying front wing element didn’t make it over the debris fence into the crowd – and that it wasn’t a larger part (or parts) of the cars taking flight…

Then their squabble spilled out into social media (fuel to the flames!), which is never going to help anyone. Force India has already declared it will no longer allow them to ‘race freely’ against each other. My question is: can the team ever trust them again?

Ocon says Perez put their lives at risk with collision

Perez refutes Ocon’s “he tried to kill me” claim on Twitter