Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin says Red Bull are blaming Lewis Hamilton for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix crash to protect Max Verstappen. When you look at Turn 4 earlier in the race, [Lewis] backed out of it, but it was clear for Max [before the incident] it would end up in a crash. ‘I think Max had earned the right to be given more space to work with in turn two but I think you could look at this as a racing incident. ‘I think Lewis tried to open up at Turn 1 to force Max to cut the corner. But it is a very typical manoeuvre [in] Turn 1, Turn 2, and they have been unlucky [to] touch wheel to wheel.

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