Charles Leclerc has kept his Spanish Grand Prix podium after the stewards ruled they would take no action on his late-race contact with Formula 1 rival Max Verstappen.
Leclerc made minor contact with Verstappen after drawing alongside him on the main straight on the restart, following a major snap for the Red Bull driver coming out of the final corner.
It was a coming together that incensed Verstappen in the moment, although the spotlight was then taken off it through Verstappen's subsequent contact with George Russell.
"Honestly I don’t know what happened there," said Verstappen to Sky about the Leclerc contact. "It was really odd.
"Because he was already basically past, the move was almost done, and suddenly he moved left - which could have been a big one. It was just really weird. I don’t know what happened."
Leclerc said he "probably would've been very vocal" about the incident in Verstappen's shoes as it was the only chance for Verstappen, struggling on the hard tyre, to get the podium position back. He added that he personally didn't have "any particular feeling" about the contact.
"There was nothing special - I overtook on the inside, he tried to squeeze me to the dirty side of the track, then I had the upper hand because I had more speed because of the mistake he had done.
"And then I was trying to take the slipstream of the McLaren [of Lando Norris] went a tiny bit to the left, he didn't seem to want to move at all - and we touched a little bit. But there was nothing special."
The stewards ruled that both drivers contributed to the incident in "moving slightly towards each other", although it is not clear whether in Verstappen's case they meant the initial forcing of Leclerc to the right or any last-second move to the right before the collision, which appears imperceptible from the Red Bull driver's onboard.
The stewards' verdict read as follows: "Car 1 [Verstappen] lost traction while navigating Turn 14 and therefore had to defend his position on track against Car 16. Car 16 proceeded to move to overtake Car 1 on the straight-finish straight. Both cars were moving slightly towards each other in the middle of the track and a minor collision occurred as a result.
"Both drivers were of the view that this was an avoidable collision and potentially have resulted in a major crash but neither driver was wholly or predominantly to blame."
Verstappen is within one penalty point of a race ban having got three penalty points as well as a 10-second time penalty for his separate incident with Russell.
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