Jolyon Palmer says he does not care about Fernando Alonso's complaints in the aftermath of their Italian Grand Prix collision, insisting he was pushed off the circuit by the Spaniard.
Alonso was left seething after he and Palmer came together at the second chicane at Monza, as the Renault driver skipped the corner and failed to hand back the position. Alonso had already vented his frustrations over team radio directly after the incident and was unhappy Palmer only received a five-second time penalty from the stewards, accusing Monza's officials of "having a Heineken" rather than paying attention to proceedings.
Palmer was later forced out of the grand prix, which Alonso declared was "karma", before he too was called into retirement by McLaren with just three laps remaining. The pair also collided during the Belgian Grand Prix as Alonso appeared to run Palmer out of road and the Briton believes Alonso was at fault on both occasions.
"I was ahead coming in the corner, he braked super late and forced me off the track," Palmer told Sky Sports. "I'm sure it will be another talking point at the next race because Fernando is not very happy about it but I don't care.
"It's what I thought might happen. We had a big meeting [at Monza] and if someone is on the inside you know you can just release the brakes. You are ahead at the apex, sure, but the other guy has nowhere to go apart from crash or cut the corner. I cut the corner, came back on side-by-side, and made it in the next corner."
Palmer, who was running as high as 11th before serving his time penalty in his pit stop, feels he could have battled in the points positions before his retirement had he not been punished for the clash.
"We were looking pretty good in the race, then the five seconds in the stop put us quite a long way back. The pace we had was good, quicker than all those in that group up to the edge of the points, it's just a shame that on the super-soft [in the second stint] I didn't get the chance to catch and overtake some people."