LEWIS HAMILTON has been accused of “crying like a girl” and urged to take up ballet by Minttu Raikkonen, wife of F1 driver Kimi, following his collision with the Ferrari driver at the British Grand Prix yesterday.

A furious Hamilton and his Mercedes team claim Raikkonen may have crashed into him on purpose to afford Sebastian Vettel free reign at the front of the field.

Vettel won on Hamilton’s home turf to move eight points clear of the Briton, who recovered from last to finish second.

Hamilton was visibly angry with Raikkonen after the race and refused to dismiss the suggestion that his actions could have been deliberate.

But Minttu Raikkonen was having none of the whinging, writing online: “If you cry like a girl when you lose, do ballet.”

Later, after removing the post, and when addressing a fan who defended Hamilton, she added: “Just to be clear, I was not talking about the driver but the team who was crying afterwards that someone did something on purpose. No he didn’t. It’s called racing.”

Hamilton’s accusations of foul play against Ferrari overshadowed his remarkable comeback drive in front of a record crowd at Silverstone.

The multimillionaire tax-dodger fled the Northamptonshire circuit for London in a helicopter last night before trying to row back his remarks.

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

Ferrari have clearly been riled by Mercedes’s accusations of underhand tactics, with team boss Maurizio Arrivabene also taking aim at their former employee James Allison.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said: “To put it in James Allison’s words, this is either deliberate or incompetence.” Englishman Allison, Mercedes’s technical chief, left Ferrari in 2016 before joining the Silver Arrows.

Allison “should be ashamed of himself because he worked for many years at Maranello,” Arrivabene said. “He took quite a bit of money from Maranello as well. You have to be elegant and know how to lose.”

Arrivabene, who was speaking to Italian TV, added: “We are here in England. Sometimes they want to teach us how to be gentlemen. He should really start first. This is a lesson for us to stay classy. A thing that they [Mercedes] haven’t done.”

Hamilton and Mercedes will renew their rivalry with Ferrari at Vettel’s home race in Germany a week on Sunday.

“We have got to keep pushing,” Hamilton said. “Ferrari have got a little bit fortunate in the last couple of races so I hope that we get a few more positive races.

“It has been such an emotional roller-coaster ride this season. It is so close, which I love, but the goal is to be ahead by the end.

“We have two factories at Brackley and Brixworth [in Northamptonshire], so I have an army and Ferrari have an army. It is Italy versus England.

“We have got another 11 races to go and it already feels like the longest season of my life but this race encourages me that I still have the fight in my heart.”