Renault Sport F1 Team's Nico Hülkenberg approached Haas' Kevin Magnussen after Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix about an incident between the two during the race, in which Magnussen made an illegal position defense maneuver around turn two, pushing Hülkenberg off the track.
"Once again, you're the most unsporting driver on the grid," said Hülkenberg. Magnussen replied, "suck my balls, honey." Likewise, Magnussen can suck on the pair of penalty points he earned himself for his maneuver, not to mention the additional pair of positions he lost due to the five second time penalty he was awarded, dropping him from 11th to 13th in the race classification.
For those who did not watch the Hungarian Grand Prix, here's what happened. Hülkenberg launched an overtake around the outside of Magnussen, who appeared to deliberately track wide to push him off the track. The blocking and the resulting penalty were fruitless—Magnussen would have finished outside the points even if he had not received the time penalty, even though Hülkenberg later retired, and was classified 17th.
Haas boss Gunther Steiner, however, sees things differently. He defended Magnussen's illegal defense in an interview with Motorsport.
"Kevin did the right thing and stood his point there, in my opinion," said Steiner. He went on to justify Magnussen's actions as comeuppance for the first corner incident between Grosjean and Hülkenberg. "Nico was the guy who destroyed Romain's race [...] Is it sporting to run into Romain? I mean, he is a bully and he got away a long time with it and maybe now it's time that somebody stands up to him. He's a good driver, he doesn't need to be like this."
Grosjean eventually retired due to a pit stop mistake, as one of the wheel nuts ended up cross threaded.
This now poses the question: is a malevolent action an appropriate response to a benevolent action? Hülkenberg's coming-together with Grosjean was chalked up as a racing incident by the stewards, with nobody at enough fault to warrant punishment. Grosjean's eventual retirement cannot be fairly attributed to Hülkenberg, so is it even fair to say that blocking him karma befitting of his prior actions that race?