Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has accused Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and George Russell of violating an unwritten rule for F1 drivers after their collision at the Qatar Grand Prix. Hamilton and Russell both vented on the radio about each other’s racing craft after their first-lap crash in Sunday’s race, which forced Hamilton to retire for the first time this season.
After starting third on the grid behind Russell in second, Hamilton got the jump on his team-mate and tried to engineer an audacious manoeuvre around the outside of Turn One. But the 38-year-old, having got his nose in front of his countryman, failed to judge the distance properly as he moved across and caught the left front tyre of Russell’s car.
The seven-time world champion’s own rear tyre flew off and the high-speed collision sent him spinning off into the dusty gravel trap, causing him to retire from the race. Russell found himself down in 19th place at the end of the first lap but somehow managed to fight back to take fourth position at the checkered flag.
And Horner called out the pair for breaking a golden team rule and forgetting to race fairly against each other, predicting that Mercedes will hold a meeting to discuss the events after their feisty coming together at the Lusail International Circuit.
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“I mean, I’m sure as a team, you never want to see that,” Horner told reporters after the race, per GP Blog. “The one thing you always ask your team-mates to do is to give each other room and it didn’t look like that happened today. I’m sure they’ve got their own internal discussion about that.”
It is not the first time Hamilton and Russell have come to blows on the track as team-mates, as the two Brits angered Toto Wolff with an incident in qualifying at the Spanish Grand Prix earlier this year that saw Hamilton pushed onto the grass by his team-mate at high speed. Mercedes boss Wolff later blamed it on a ‘miscommunication’, but their latest battle on the track certainly had more damaging consequences.
Despite claiming at the time that his team-mate had “taken me out” in a radio message to his race engineer, Hamilton took full responsibility for causing the collision and apologised to Russell after the race.
“I just feel really sorry to my team. It was an opportunity today to get some good points,” he told Sky Sports F1 after the race. “In the heat of the moment, I didn’t really understand what happened, I just obviously felt the tap from behind.
“But I don’t think George probably had anywhere to go and, yeah, it’s just one of those really unfortunate situations. I mean, I’m happy to take responsibility as the older one.”
After watching video footage of the incident on a replay, Hamilton later tweeted to his followers on X – formerly Twitter – writing: “I’ve watched the replay and it was 100 per cent my fault and I take full responsibility. Apologies to my team and to George.”
