Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene thinks it would be wrong to point the finger of blame at Sebastian Vettel after his collision with Kimi Raikkonen at Turn 1 in China.
For the second race in a row Ferrari's hopes of challenging Mercedes disappeared in the early stages, with Vettel swiping Raikkonen's car while coming through the Turn 1/2 sequence. Vettel angrily confronted Kvyat about it after the race, blaming the Russian of driving "like a crazy" at the start, though the Red Bull pilot received no punishment.
Arrivabene says it is never ideal to see teammates collide.
"I think it was an accident, these are things that are part of the race but of course when you have your two drivers crashing with each other, it's not good," Arrivabene said. "What can I say more than that.
"I think pointing the finger at somebody is not correct. Yes Kvyat was doing his race, coming into the kerb at high speed but I think that Seb and Kimi were doing the same in the Kvyat position. Now of course if you want to defend your position you move away and unfortunately Kimi was there but I mean this is racing, it's not monopoly."
The incident forced Raikkonen to pit again, prompting a fine recovery drive from the back of the field to fifth, but also left Vettel with damage to his front wing. Despite the No.5 Ferrari shedding a piece of its endplate later in the race Arrivabene said there was no sense in pitting Vettel for a change.
"It was the side of the front wing that we got from the engineer in the back of the garage, they were checking the numbers and they said if we are going to stop and lose at least 10 seconds to change, we are not gaining anything so it is better to stay like this with the data that we have."