Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene says the team's former technical director James Allison needs lessons in how to be a gentlemen after suggesting Kimi Raikkonen intentionally knocked Lewis Hamilton off the road at the start of the British Grand Prix.
Sebastian Vettel's win at Silverstone, ending a run of four straight Lewis Hamilton wins (and five in a row for Mercedes), controversy arose from comments made post-race. Hamilton called his Turn 3 clash with Raikkonen an "interesting tactic" from Ferrari before Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff also raised questions about the incident.
Wolff said: "In James Allison's words, 'do you think it is deliberate or incompetence?'. So this leaves us with a judgement."
Allison left Ferrari mid-way through 2016 and joined Mercedes ahead of last season. Arrivabene has criticised his former colleague for what Wolff suggested was said.
Speaking to Sky Italia after the race, Arrivabene said: "I came here to clarify, if he [Allison] actually said something like that, I mean, he should be ashamed of himself, because he worked many years in Maranello, he took quite a bit of money from Maranello aswell, today he's doing his job, you have to be elegant and know how to lose.
"Also, we're here in England, sometimes they want to teach us how to be gentlemen, he should start first. Really, this annoyed me so much.
"Also incompetent, who? Kimi? Who's he to judge what a driver is doing in the car, I can accept it from Jacques [Villeneuve, Sky Italia pundit] because he's been a driver, but that person? No."
Arrivabene said Mercedes should spend more time focusing on why Hamilton was defending third position in the first place, having had a sluggish getaway from pole position which put him on the defensive for the first few corners.
"First of all [Allison] should look the telemetry and understand that his driver unfortunately for himself had a bad start, so having a bad start he immediately lost 2 positions. Kimi had a good start, we have the telemetry data, so he found himself immediately on top of Hamilton.
"I want to remind everyone that in China we had a situation between Vettel and Verstappen and nobody said anything, all fine. But I mean, I want to give them a message: it's been a beautiful battle, a battle that I think the audience appreciated, there will be other battles where most likely Mercedes will win, this is a lesson for us to stay classy, a thing that they haven't done today."