Max Verstappen explains George Russell Safety Car “confusion” in Canadian GP

Max Verstappen has shed light on the incident with George Russell behind the Safety Car at the F1 Canadian Grand Prix.

The race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve finished behind the Safety Car after Lando Norris crashed out following contact with McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.

While running behind the Safety Car, Verstappen briefly overtook Russell, who was leading the race.

When this occurred, Verstappen reported on team radio: “George suddenly just aggressively braked.”

Russell also noted it to his race engineer by saying: “Verstappen just overtook me under the safety car.”

Speaking after the race, Verstappen admitted the speed of the Safety Car caused “confusion”.

“I think we were both trying to say to the Safety Car to speed up because he was only going 120kp/h, but maybe the Safety Car was doing that to give a bit more time to maybe get a race lap in,” Verstappen told Sky Sports.

“Then I think George was trying to speed up to the Safety Car. I was trying to do the same, and once he tried to speed up the Safety Car, he backed out and then caused a bit of confusion.”

Verstappen ultimately finished the race in second, returning to the podium after a disappointing weekend in Barcelona last time out.

The Dutchman conceded that Red Bull didn’t have quite the pace to win the race despite having a “solid car”.

“I mean difficult to say. I would say as a team this weekend we did a good job,” he added.

“There were no mistakes really. We had a solid car I think. Just in the race we didn’t really have that pace. Again, a bit too much tyre degradation in the first few stints. We drove quite a defensive race.

“We had to be very aggressive with our stops and I honestly thought that last stop was very aggressive and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it to the end with good tyres. Luckily, on the lower fuel load it looked a bit more under control so that was positive.”

Verstappen on title prospects

With Verstappen out-scoring the two McLarens, he’s 43 points off Piastri in the drivers’ championship.

Verstappen feels McLaren were weaker than usual in Montreal and that Red Bull would need to up their game if he’s to win a fifth consecutive title this year.

“We need more pace. Today, we only stayed ahead because of our qualifying,” Verstappen explained.

“Being ahead and the team doing the right thing with the strategy. You can’t always rely on that. We need pure pace every single weekend to try and be ahead of them. I also think they were a bit weaker than normal. Normally, they’re quite far ahead.

“We take every positive that we can but we still have a lot of work to do to really mount a challenge in the championship.”