Frustrating George Russell to the point that he was willing to cop a 10-second penalty just to be free of the deliberately slow Alex Albon, the latter picked up the tab for Sunday night’s post-Monaco GP dinner.

Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix saw Formula 1 implement a mandatory two-stop strategy in the hope of avoiding a repeat of last year’s bore-fest.

George Russell: Dinner on you tonight Albono!

Instead, it became a race of strategy, questionable team tactics and a whole lot of frustration for those who fell foul of the latter.

Russell and his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli were amongst the latter.

Lining up 14th and 15th after their qualifying troubles, they found themselves running behind the Williams team-mates, who in turn had the Racing Bulls pairing ahead of them.

Racing Bulls were the first to play the team tactic game as Liam Lawson slowed down to build a gap for Isack Hadjar, who was able to make both of his pit stops before lap 20 and still run inside the top ten.

Racing Bulls’ tactic forced Williams’ hand as they too played the team game, Carlos Sainz backing off to make a gap for Albon. Russell pointed that out to Mercedes and was told Sainz had dropped his pace by three seconds.

Albon returned the favour for his team-mate, with Russell irate with his good mate’s antics.

“He’s driving dangerously slow!” he said over the radio. “He’s just slamming on the brakes at all areas.”

As Russell’s frustrations boiled over, he cut the Nouvelle Chicane to pass Albon and claimed he had to do it to avoid a collision given Albon’s “erratic” driving.

But told he had to give the position back, he defiantly claimed he would rather “take the penalty” than give the position back. Never mind a 10-second penalty, the stewards hit him a drive-through penalty as his radio message made it “clear” that his actions were “done deliberately”.

Albon and Sainz finished ninth and tenth, with Russell outside of the points in 11th place.

The Mercedes driver took to social to ligth-heartedly call for payback in some form – dinner.

“Monaco is such a special place but we knew our weekend was over following the failure in qualifying,” Russell wrote.

He added: “Dinner on you tonight Albono!!!”

Albon delivered, picking up the tab on Sunday night.

But while Albon was happy to pick up the tab, the Williams driver says his team did nothing wrong as Formula 1 is a “team sport”, even if the tactics are not always pretty and can be frustrating.

“Not how I want to go racing and I don’t think enjoyable for anyone watching as well,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com.

“We knew it was a possibility, we knew this strategy could happen. I think we were talking about it on Thursdays. We didn’t want it to happen. And I think on our side, it wasn’t how we were going to go racing.

“Once RB started, it basically put us in a position where we had to do it as well. He punched the field up so tightly, the only way to get out of that situation was to basically repeat what they did.

“And, yeah, not pretty and frustrating, but in the end, it’s a team sport, and we maximised three points for the team.”

As for Russell’s antics and complaints, he said with a smile: “George is cheeky, when you’re in the car with him on the road, he does some cheeky moves. He did it on the racetrack as well.

“I mean, I knew exactly what he was doing, and it was a bit too obvious to get away with. But I mean I applaud the effort, he had to do something to get points. And he did make us worry for a couple of laps before the drive-through penalty came through.”

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