Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has called Red Bull’s protest against George Russell at the Canadian Grand Prix “petty” and “embarrassing”, and suggests the FIA should revise its processes.
Red Bull protested against race-winner Russell nearly two hours after the race had finished; team principal Christian Horner stating it was due to him dropping more than 10 car lengths behind the Safety Car and braking erratically on the back straight. The first of those two protests was withdrawn when it was explained Russell was following the yellow flag delta leaving the pits, but the second was eventually dismissed five and a half hours after the checkered flag.
“First of all, it took team Red Bull Racing two hours before they launched the protest, so that was in their doing,” Wolff told Sky Sports at the F1 movie premiere. “Honestly, it’s so petty and so small.
“They’ve done it in Miami. Now they lodged two protests. They took one back because it was ridiculous. They come up with some weird ISC clauses – sporting code clauses. I guess the FIA needs to look at that, because it’s so farfetched it was rejected.
“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.”
Wolff added his belief that it was a team-driven decision and not one that came from Max Verstappen, who had appeared calm about the situation throughout his post-race media obligations.
“One of them they actually pulled as a protest, they didn’t even follow it through because it was nonsense. The second one took us five hours because I don’t even know what you refer to as ‘unsportsmanlike behavior’ 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.”
Red Bull team principal Horner also told Sky Sports that he felt his team was totally within its rights to go to the stewards.
“No, absolutely not [got any 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.”