Fernando Alonso has taken aim at Alex Albon following their collision on lap one of the United States Grand Prix, calling him part of a lower-third of the Formula 1 grid where "the quality of the drivers" is "very low".
Albon dived to the inside of Alonso, who had Esteban Ocon's Haas on his outside, but made contact that Albon said damaged his Williams's front wing and that stripped the left-hand bargeboard from Alonso's Aston Martin.
Alonso described this variously as having left him with "half a car" and damage that was costing him "half a second or more" per lap, and pondered "I don't know how we kept on going and how we were semi-competitive".
And after the race he took issue with Albon's move, which was not penalised by the F1 stewards.
"I think when you start at the back there is this risk always," said Alonso, who finished a lapped 16th following a slow second stop to change his front wing.
"I think the quality of the drivers in the lower third of the grid is very low, as we saw today with Alex.
"So I think we need to improve the car and start a little bit higher up."
Asked by F1 TV for his view on the incident, Alonso said that "Albon forgot that corner 11 was there and he had to turn left" and reiterated his point about the quality of drivers in the bottom third of the grid being "low".
Alonso claimed afterwards he thought it was "by far" his best race of the season and that without the contact he could have finished in the points on merit.
He underlined this later by quipping in a question about Aston Martin's performance level relative to Williams, which is five points ahead in the battle for ninth in the constructors' championship, that "we could have scored points today and maybe get close in the constructors' championship, but they made sure that we didn't have any chance".
Those Alonso quotes were not put directly to Albon, but he likened their battles in the race - Alonso did pass Albon again late on, after a slow second pitstop where his front wing was changed - to the kind of Ford Mustang versus Mini battle seen in historic races at Goodwood.
He added that "it's always fun to race Fernando", who is "strong, but he's fair always" before adding: "Maybe he thought I was a bit over the edge, I don't know - I'm sure I'll find out soon. But I had a good amount of fun."
Albon said of their clash: "It felt like there was a car on the right side of Fernando [Ocon] and he gave Fernando enough space as if he thought there was only one car on his inside but then I was on the inside of Fernando so then I think it pinched and I tried to get out of the way and get on the kerb but I didn't make all of it.
"So I imagine he got damage, I know I got damage, driving around with a broken wing for the race."