Lewis Hamilton has changed his view on the incident between himself and Kimi Raikkonen which took him out of contention for victory at the British Grand Prix this past Sunday.

The Mercedes driver made a poor start from pole at Silverstone and was passed by both eventual race winner Sebastian Vettel and teammate Valtteri Bottas in the first few corners.

It was when the second Ferrari driver had a look down the inside that it all went wrong, however, as Raikkonen locked his front-left and just made contact with the left-rear of Hamilton's car, spinning him into the run-off area.

The Finn would be given a 10-second penalty by the stewards but, despite recovering back to second place, the current world champion would clearly be upset post-race storming out of parc ferme without conducting an interview and later suggesting Ferrari had "interesting tactics".

Even some within Mercedes agreed, with technical director James Allison, himself a former member of the Scuderia, calling the move "deliberate or incompetence".

That would lead to an angry response from Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene, who slammed his ex-employee.

“Who is incompetent? Kimi? Who is he to judge what the drivers are doing in the car?” he told Sky Italia.

“If he really said something like that, he should be ashamed!

“Allison worked at Maranello for many years, but now we are here in England teaching him to be a gentleman.

“I accept it from [TV pundit] Jacques Villeneuve because he was a driver. But this guy?”

Now though, the day after the race, tempers do appear to have calmed with Hamilton posting a story on Instagram where he claimed emotions got the best of him.

"Kimi said sorry and I accept it and we move on," he wrote. "It was a racing incident and nothing more. Sometimes we say dumb shit and we learn from it."

His defeat to Vettel saw a remarkable run of results come to an end at Silverstone, with the 33-year-old unbeaten at his home race since 2014 and Mercedes' streak going back one year further than that.

The result of it all is the Ferrari driver now has an eight-point lead in the championship but Lewis will have the chance to get immediate payback as F1 returns to Hockenheim for Vettel's home race, the German Grand Prix, in two weeks time.