Nicholas Latifi said he cannot accept the punishment given to him for his collision with Zhou Guanyu last weekend as he wasn't "able to give my side of the story".
The Williams racer got into a tangle with his Alfa Romeo rival at the Singapore Grand Prix. Zhou was sandwiched between the Canadian's car and the wall as they attempted to navigate Turn 5 on the seventh lap of the race.
The result was both of them picking up damage, which meant neither would finish the race. Zhou was particularly unhappy afterwards, describing the move as "dangerous" as he questioned Latifi's claim that he had not seen the Alfa Romeo in his mirror.
It seems the stewards agreed with him, as Latifi was the one who was punished by the FIA. As he retired from the race, the Canadian was given a five-place grid penalty for this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix which, given his poor qualifying record this season, most likely means he will start from the back of the grid.
"In the end, after watching all the different onboards, if you're going off the rulebook, it's clear he came up alongside me and I didn't leave him enough space," he admitted. But Latifi went on to say he feels he should still have been allowed to explain himself before being punished.
He added: "The things that were not considered – and one of the frustrations is that I didn't have a chance to go to the stewards because they didn't ever summon me, which normally happens when there's an incident between two drivers – is that I was taking the same line I'd taken every single lap beforehand.
"I did actually look in my mirrors both ways, you can see from the onboard I glanced in both directions. But the problem was because of the difference in lines, he was driving in the blind spot of the mirror the whole of the way down into the corner. In that sense, as drivers, we all know there are massive blind spots in the car, and again I did look.
"But if he's driving in a place where I can't see him, when I do make an effort to look, and I again take my normal line, he ended being there. But if I can't see him because he is driving in a place where he should expect I can't see him, especially on a street track in the wet, it's tricky.
"If I would have got penalised in the end after, let's say, being able to give my side of the story – I know it doesn't make much of a difference – but I would have accepted that. But not being able to go to the stewards and give my side of events and different points that weren't considered, that was a bit of frustrating, because we're always talking about the consistency amongst decisions and penalties and whatnot."
