Michael Schumacher says he put his Merc W02 into a spin in Hungary in order to avoid taking out former Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.
Following his second pit stop of the afternoon, the German was battling with Massa for position in the Hungarian GP and came close to hitting the Ferrari driver.
But, instead of risking the contact - and yet another penalty for the season, Schumacher put his W02 into a spin.
However, instead of returning to the race, he ended up parking his car as it suffered a gearbox problem at the same time.
"We had a gearbox failure, we obviously need to understand details of the failure," he told BBC Sport. "After spinning and continuing, shifting up through the higher gears, we lost a gear.
"I obviously wanted to keep my position against Felipe and pushed hard, but in order to avoid contact I had to put the car into a spin.
"The contact would have been okay, I would have just lost a couple of seconds."
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