17/06/2025
NEWS STORY
Christian Horner has revealed that his team warned the FIA of potential gamesmanship from rivals in Canada.
Following his clash with George Russell in Spain, Max Verstappen went to Montreal knowing that he was just one point shy of an automatic race ban.
Strong in all three practice sessions, the Dutchman snatched pole from Oscar Piastri on Saturday by 0.061s, only to have Russell go 0.160s quicker.
In the trackside interviews, when asked about a potential clash with the Dutchman as they battled for the first corner, the Mercedes driver laughed: "I've got a few more points on my license to play with. So, yeah, let's see."
However, even before Russell's comment, Red Bull had approached race director Rui Marques calling on him to look out for any attempt by rivals to goad Verstappen.
"I think that it was inevitable that there was going to be some potential gamesmanship," said Horner. "It's something that we raised after the driver's briefing with the race director, just so that they were mindful of it as well, because it was clear that that kind of stuff goes on.
"We just said to him, look, could they please keep an eye on it because there's been, obviously, comments have been raised in the media'."
While the start was without incident, it was at the end of the race that Red Bull felt Russell was playing games.
Under the Safety Car, Russell braked on the back straight causing Verstappen to overtake him, the Briton immediately advising his team over the radio.
However, at the same time the Dutchman was telling his engineer Gianpiero Lambiase that Russell was driving erratically and was also outside the mandated 10 car lengths behind the Safety Car.
At race end Red Bull issued a formal protest which was thrown out five and a half hours later.
Insisting that Russell was "obviously looking in his mirror for Max", asked if he really believed Russell was seeking to force Verstappen's hand, Horner said: "I think you could hear from George's press comments yesterday, you know, his objective was reasonably clear.
"So I don't think there was any surprises with that."