19/04/2021
NEWS STORY
For George Russell it appears almost to be a case of 'hero to zero', in the opinion of Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff.
Only a couple of months ago, George Russell was being touted as Lewis Hamilton's teammate or even his replacement following his impressive drive in the Sakhir Grand Prix when standing in for the world champion.
Narrowly missing out on pole, it was a combination of bad luck and poor strategy that robbed the 2018 F2 champion of a famous victory.
Indeed, such was Russell's performance, some claimed it cast doubt on Hamilton's 'greatest of all time' claim, while it was speculated that Mercedes would use the Briton's performance, and his obvious potential, when negotiating a new deal with the seven-time champ.
However, in the wake of Sunday's clash with Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff was less than impressed.
"There is never such a situation in life where one is one hundred percent to blame and the other zero," said the Austrian. "The whole situation should have never happened.
"Valtteri had a bad first 30 laps and should have never been in that position," he admitted, "but George should never have launched into this manoeuvre considering that the track was drying up. It meant taking risk and the other car in front of him was Mercedes.
"Any driver development, any young driver, must never lose this global perspective," he added. "Lots to learn for him I guess.
"You need to see that there is a Mercedes and it's wet, so there is a certain risk to overtake and the odds are against him anyway when the track is drying up.
"I don't want him to try to prove anything to us," he insisted, "because one thing I can say, knowing Valtteri for five years, is that he is not trying to prove anything."
While both drivers blamed the other, the Imola stewards declared the clash to be a "racing incident" and opted to take no further action.
In the aftermath of the clash, Russell walked over to Bottas' stricken car and remonstrated with the Finn. In a subsequent interview the Briton suggested that the Mercedes driver might have acted differently if racing another driver.
"It begs the question why he would do that for P9," he told Sky Sports. "Perhaps if it was another driver, he wouldn't have. So that's what went through my mind."
"That's BS," said Wolff, when told of Russell's comment. "The whole situation is absolutely not amusing for us, to be honest."
As tempers slowly began to calm, Russell spoke to Mercedes and though he has yet to talk to Bottas since their initial 'discussion' he hopes to in the days ahead.
"It's not going to harm my relationship with Mercedes at all," he said, "I've already spoken with them, and there's understanding from both sides.
"I'm sure from my side when you're looking forward you're not really taking into consideration what car it is," he continued. "At the end of the day the move was absolutely on, we were only three-quarters of the way down the straight and that would have been a clear, easy simple overtake had it not been a little bit damp at that point.
"The point I pulled out it wasn't damp, the track was going left, I was squeezed slightly to the right, and that's where the dampness was.
"Should I have reacted how I did afterwards in the heat of the moment? Probably not no, but the emotions are incredibly high. We exchanged words and that's it."
However, for Mercedes, the clash is about more than lost points for Bottas and angry words.
"Our car is a write-off," said Wolff, "and in a cost-cap environment that is certainly not what we needed, because it's probably going to limit the upgrades that we are able to do.
"Simply the fact that we ended there by losing it on the wet, because there was no contact before that, it was losing it on the wet, making both cars crash out is not what I expect to see.
"We are very stretched under the cost cap, and what we always feared was a total write-off of a car. This one is not going to be a total write-off but almost and that is not something that we wanted."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Imola, here.