Lando Norris says he had no reason to make life easy for Sergio Perez during the pair's skirmish in the final stages of Sunday's Dutch Grand Prix.
After starting from the pitlane, Perez carved his way through the field and all the way up into the top ten, a remarkable charge that earned the Red Bull driver the fans' vote for 'Driver of the Day'.
But seven laps from the checkered flag, Perez caught up with Norris and a battle for P9 ensured between the two drivers.
The Mexican overtook the McLaren driver on the outside of Zandvoort's Turn 1, but on the exit of the corner, the two drivers locked wheels, a contact that annoyed Perez who completed the pass but suffered damage during the run-in which he said was "quite unnecessary".
But Norris defended his maneuver, insisting it was a plain case of hard racing.
"I'm not going to make his life easy, you know," Norris told Sky F1. "I think we can just be happy we're racing. He's in the Red Bull, he's in the quickest car on the track.
"But any driver, no matter who it is, no matter if you're just purely racing against Max or Lewis, whoever on track, you're going to treat them all the same, and you're not going to make life easy because I want those points just as much as he does.
"I tried, I squeezed him a little bit, but I didn't force him off the track or anything like that. We both fought each other hard, he cut down quite a bit into Turn 1 and I just didn't want to give him a lot of room. I gave him enough, just not all the world.
"Yeah, he still managed to get past and none of us crashed, and he still went on to overtake another one."
Norris revealed that his momentum while running side by side with Perez was unsettled when they made contact as his foot was knocked off the throttle.
"The whole car bounced a lot," he said. "So my foot came off and I thought something happened, I thought I lost drive in the car.
"But then I came on throttle and I went into the corner praying that the suspension wasn’t broken or anything.
"It was a bit of a risk. I still tried to get back past him, I stayed alongside, but just the momentum that I lost from my foot coming off-throttle cost me the position."
While Perez went on to conclude his Dutch Grand Prix in eighth place, Norris finsihed P10, salvaging a single point from a difficult weekend in Holland.
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
