French GP: Toto Wolff shows George Russell "tough love" on team radio

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Toto Wolff did something unusual and showed tough love to driver George Russell over team radio during the French Grand Prix, but it was necessary.

Mercedes had a lot to celebrate after the French GP. A P2 and P3 finish is better than most people in F1 expected. It was not smooth sailing for George Russell, and team Principal Toto Wolff had to intervene over team radio to calm Russell down towards the end of the race. 

During his battle for P3 with Red Bull's Sergio Perez, Russell felt Perez gained an illegal advantage after he left the track at turn 8 as Russell tried to make a move on the inside. Perez rejoined the track ahead of Russell and was not forced to give-up the position to Russell.

Russell intently urged his team to demand a penalty, and continued to complain vehemently that Perez gained an unfair advantage by leaving the track and rejoining ahead of Russell. Team Principal Toto Wolff eventually got on team radio and told Russell "George, keep your head down. You can hunt him [Perez] down," to shift Russell's focus back to just driving. 

After the race when asked why he got on the team radio Wolff had this to say, "As a driver you get upset with the situation. You feel what has happened is not right. You also don't see the helicopter view. I think he had pace at the time, and could catch him on track. So I wanted to re-set him mentally."

Toto's message paid off, with Russell reaching the podium at P3. Following the race Russell reflected, "Emotions were high for all of us. I felt that I had done a mega-move on Checo but didn’t get to keep the position. I enjoyed hearing Toto on the radio! We’re in this together. When you sit in the car you can feel alone. You don’t know what the engineers look at. The engineers don’t know how we feel in the car."

Russell will be looking to carry this momentum into Hungary this upcoming weekend, he has managed to finish in the top-5 in every race except 1 this year.

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