abu dhabi sergio perez denied deliberately crashing his red bull in qualifying for mays monaco grand prix after media speculation that the race was at the root of a team controversy in brazil last weekenddouble formula one world champion max verstappen refused to give back a place to perez at interlagos despite the team telling him to and said his actions stemmed from something that happened in the pastdutch media have reported it was payback for perez allegedly crashing deliberately in monaco where overtaking is extremely difficult the mexican lined up third and ahead of verstappen on the grid and went on to winperez who is fighting for second place in a championship already won by verstappen told reporters ahead of the abu dhabi seasonender that monaco had not been discussed in cleartheair talks after brazileveryone makes mistakes in monaco and in general in qualifying its not like it was done on purpose said the 32yearoldthat rumour is wrong he added when asked about speculation he had admitted within the team to crashing on purposethe events in brazil sparked a backlash against verstappen who said he and his family had suffered online threats and abuseverstappen said he was prepared to help perez if required this weekendperez who has enjoyed a harmonious relationship with verstappen and assisted him on several occasions said he and the 25yearold were grown ups and would move on from brazilhe said the reasons for verstappens refusal to make way for him had not been made clearwhether its monaco or other things thats down to him to tell you i dont know how long its been there said the mexican we havent discussed itwe discussed what happened in brazil and we went through all the scenarios all the mistakes we did as a team not preparing the race enough and so on