Toto Wolff labels Red Bull’s George Russell appeal ’embarrassing’

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has labelled Red Bull’s attempt to protest George Russell’s victory at the Canadian Grand Prix as “petty” and “embarrassing.”

After beating Max Verstappen to take Mercedes first win of the season in Montreal, Russell was called to the stewards on Sunday evening after Red Bull claimed he had “displayed unsportsmanlike intent” by braking excessively behind a late safety car.

While Russell did hit the brakes behind the safety car, the stewards found nothing erratic about his car’s behavior and said reporting Verstappen overtaking the Mercedes behind the safety car, which is against the regulations, did not amount to unsportsmanlike conduct.

Over five hours after the chequered flag, the stewards finally rejected the protest saying it was not founded and confirmed Russell’s win would stand.

Speaking to Sky Sports ahead of the launch of the F1 movie in New York, Wolff slammed the actions of his rivals, who also unsuccessfully protested Russell in Miami for failing to slow under yellow flags.

“First of all, it took team Red Bull Racing two hours before they launched the protest, so that was in their doing. You know, honestly, it’s so petty and so small,” Wolff said.

“They’ve done it in Miami. Now they launched two protests. They took one back because it was ridiculous.

“They come up with some weird clauses, what they call clauses. I guess the FIA needs to look at that because it’s so farfetched it was rejected.

“You know, you race, you win and you lose on track. That was a fair victory for us, like so many they had in the past. And it’s just embarrassing.”

When Red Bull team principal Christian Horner spoke to media in Canada just after launching the protest, he said his team also planned to protest the gap between Russell and the safety car after the snake of cars left the pit lane on lap 69.

F1’s rules state that the lead driver must maintain a gap of 10-car lengths or less to the safety car at all times, and Russell appeared to exceed that gap as he left the pits.

However, it emerged that Russell was complying with the time delta appearing on his dashboard, and when the details of the protest were published later that evening there was no mention of Russell leaving more than 10 car lengths.

“One of them they actually pulled as a protest, they didn’t even follow it through because it was nonsense,” Wolff added.

“The second one took us five hours because I don’t even know what you refer to as ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’ or something.

“What is it all about? Who decides it? Because I’m 100% sure it’s not Max, he’s a racer.

“He would never go for a protest on such a trivial thing.”

Prior to the protest, Verstappen had told media that he and Russell both felt the safety car was moving too slowly on the back straight, which is why they were trying to hurry it up and then needed to brake hard – indicating he felt Russell had done nothing wrong.

Sky Sports also interviewed Horner in New York, but the Red Bull boss said he had no regrets about lodging the protest, which saw the team forfeit a €2,000 deposit when it was rejected.

“No, absolutely not [no regrets],” Horner said. “I mean, it’s a team’s right to do so. You know, we saw something we didn’t think was quite right.

“You have the ability to put it in front of the stewards and so that’s what we chose to do. Absolutely no regrets in that.”