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Verstappen will cause 'a massive accident' - Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen says Max Verstappen will cause "a massive accident" if he continues defending in his current manner after incidents in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Verstappen and Raikkonen collided at Turn 1 at the start of the race as Sebastian Vettel turned across the two drivers fighting for position. While Raikkonen did not blame the Red Bull youngster for that incident, he says a late change of line at high speed later in the race was dangerous and should have been penalised.

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"In the first corner I think Seb didn’t see a car inside me and expected me to run in tightly, but I couldn’t," Raikkonen said. "Unfortunately when he turned in tightly I had nowhere to go and he touched my front wheel. It was obviously not ideal for the team but that’s what happened.

"The other thing… I’m completely fine with good, hard racing but of I had to back off and even brake on the run down to Turn 5, still on the straight, when I had made my move… when I have to brake not to hit somebody, as he moved afterwards, something is not correct.

"That, in my view, is completely not correct but obviously, for whatever reasons, the Stewards think it’s OK. But if I had not braked we would have had a massive accident.

"I’m sure it will happen, sooner or later, if this doesn’t change but it seems to be OK. It will be interesting to see when something will happen who’s to blame… Like I said, I’m fine with good racing and hard battles but in that situation it was not correct, in my view."

AS IT HAPPENED: Belgian Grand Prix

And Raikkonen says just telling Verstappen might not change his driving, but hopes it doesn't take a big crash to make the Dutchman listen to the comments.

"Obviously there are always different opinions from everybody. It doesn’t change an awful lot, maybe he needs an accident before things become clearer to everybody, but hopefully not, because it can be a bit bad for somebody. And obviously nobody wants to see anybody get hurt.

"Like I said, I’m fine with racing and fighting hard, but something like that should not be correct, in my view. But there are always different opinions from different people, so let’s see."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.