George Russell may be the director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, but he won’t speak for the drivers over Max Verstappen’s antics in Spain as he is “too close” to the situation.

Verstappen collided with Russell in the closing stages of the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in a move that had pundits debating whether it was intentional.

George Russell ‘too close’ to Max Verstappen incident for GPDA view

Verstappen was in a three-way battle with Charles Leclerc and Russell after a Safety Car restart, with the Ferrari driver overtaking him at Turn 1 where Russell also tried to pounce.

That move ended with Verstappen heading down the escape road and maintaining fourth place ahead of Russell, only for Red Bull to tell him to give the position to the Mercedes driver.

He appeared to do that at Turn 5 as he slowed down, but then jinked to the right and clattered into Russell’s Mercedes.

“He needs to get black flagged,” declared 2016 World Champion Nico Rosberg, who was in commentary for Sky F1. “He just crashed into Russell on purpose just to prove a point.”

Ralf Schumacher and Damon Hill also cried foul, the latter calling it “ill-judged” and “over the top, as usual.”

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Russell also claimed it “felt deliberate in the moment”, which begs the question: was the 10-second time penalty a fitting punishment?

“That’s not really my place to say, to be honest,” he told Sky F1. “Right now, I’m not even going to give it any thought, because we’ve got our own problems to deal with.

“We’re just trying to make our car go faster. We were sort of destined to finish P4, probably ahead of Charles and behind Max. Obviously the Safety Car at the end shuffled things up.

“But it’s down to stewards to decide if it was deliberate or not.

“But obviously, Max is such an amazing driver, so many people look up to him, it’s just a shame something like that continues to occur.

“It just seems totally unnecessary and it never seems to benefit himself.”

Actions that are likely to be one of the big topics at the next drivers’ briefing at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Russell, though, won’t set out the GPDA’s stance on the incident as, while he is a director, he’s also one of the drivers involved in the incident.

“I’m too close to give my opinion on behalf of the drivers,” he said.

“But you see like in Austin last year, some of the best moves ever, and then you go to Mexico and he sort of let himself down a bit.

“Then go to Imola, one of the best moves that we’ve all seen in a long time and then this happened.

“So as I said, it cost him and his team a lot of points.

“And Charles and I actually dropped off like a stone on those last two laps. He probably could have come back to fight for the podium.

“So as I said, I’m not going to lose sleep. We’ve got our own problems to deal with and that’s making our car go faster.”

Verstappen not only lost points in the title race on Sunday, scoring just one to sit 49 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri, but he’s now one penalty point away from a race ban.

The stewards ruled that the ‘collision was undoubtedly caused by the actions of Car 1’ and slapped Verstappen with three penalty points to bring his tally to 11.

He won’t lose any of those points before the end of June after the Canadian and Austrian grands prix.

Having initially claimed he had “no” regrets over his Spanish Grand Prix antics, Verstappen subsequently held up his hand in the light of Monday morning when he admitted it a social media post that his move “was not right and shouldn’t have happened.”

He added: “I always give everything out there for the team and emotions can run high. You win some together, you lose some together.”

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