Up Next
The explosive row between Max Verstappen and George Russell extended to their team bosses and raised echoes of the 2021 Red Bull vs Mercedes championship spats as Toto Wolff entered the argument and referred to Christian Horner as a “yapping little terrier” who’d been too “weak” to properly control Verstappen.
A few hours after Russell slammed Verstappen to selected media outlets including The Race, he held a wider press session in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix paddock and was pointedly joined for it by his Mercedes team principal Wolff.
When both Russell and Wolff were asked if they felt Verstappen had been “enabled” by people not “dealing with him”, Wolff took his chance to hit out at Horner.
“As a team principal it's important to be a sparring partner for your drivers,” Wolff began.
“And that means explaining that things can be more nuanced. Statements that are absolute, thinking that everything is either 100% right or 100% wrong, is just something I think you need to explain.
“Think about nuance - you need to allow for something to be 51-49, you need to allow for it to be 70-30. So there is always another side.
“And maybe when you look at it that way and you explain it to the drivers and to your team you come to the conclusion that there is truth on both sides.
“If you don't do that, you're falling short of your role. It's just weak.”
And he then stopped an attempt to move the question towards Russell with “wait, one second. I'm not finished actually” and admitted that he “lost it” when he heard that Horner had suggested Russell’s “hysterics” in front of the stewards had led to Verstappen’s Qatar GP qualifying penalty and that Russell had been generally “hysterical” over the Lusail weekend.
“Why does he feel entitled to comment about my driver?” said Wolff. “If you're thinking about it and spent 90 seconds to think about it…yapping little terrier. Always something to say.”
The notorious 2021 championship fight between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton also featured ample bad blood and rowing between Wolff and Horner.
Asked why he felt the need to join Russell’s media session, Wolff said it was because he felt Horner had needlessly crossed a line with the language he used in criticising Russell last weekend.
“I'll tell you clearly: there is a thing between drivers, and this is George and Max, and I don't want to get involved in that,” said Wolff.
“But if the other team principal calls George hysterical, this is where he crosses a line for me.
“Now, his forte for sure is not intellectual psychoanalysis. But that's quite a word.
“How dare you comment on the state of mind of my driver?”
Horner’s response is likely to come on Friday when he is in the line-up for the FIA team principals’ press conference.
There was a further echo to 2021 in Russell’s general media session when he suggested the anger towards race director Michael Masi might’ve been worse still had it been Verstappen, not Hamilton, who came out on the wrong side of his late-race restart call that set up the championship-deciding pass.
That accusation came when Russell got his turn to answer the question about whether those around Verstappen had “enabled” him.
“I think he's been enabled because nobody's stood up to him,” said Russell.
“Lewis stood up to him in 2021 and Lewis lost that championship unfairly.
“Could you imagine the roles being reversed and Max losing that championship in the manner that Lewis lost that championship? Masi would be fearing for his life.”
When that comment and Wolff’s presence at Russell’s press session were mentioned to Verstappen in a Dutch media briefing shortly afterwards, he is understood to have dismissed the Masi remark as something not worth reacting to and suggested he didn’t “need the support” of a team boss in such situations.
