George Russell should be “more worried about other issues” than Red Bull’s personnel says Christian Horner after the Briton claimed Max Verstappen’s team sent “CVs to Mercedes”.

Russell and Verstappen provided a bit of late-season drama in the F1 2024 championship when Verstappen was handed a single-place grid penalty after Russell cried “dangerous” when he came flying up behind the Red Bull driver on a cooldown lap in Qatar.

Christian Horner: The higher you rise, the sharper the knives

Having spoken with the stewards and Russell after qualifying, Verstappen left the meeting having lost pole position to Russell through the penalty and told the media that he had lost all respect for the Mercedes driver for “screwing him over”.

As the tension escalated, that led to a moment ahead of the drivers’ parade on the Sunday with Russell claiming Verstappen threatened to “put me on my f**king head in the wall”.

As the war of words played out, Russell said to the media including PlanetF1.com in a no-holds-barred press conference ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix: “I’m not questioning his driving abilities one single bit, but the second he does not have the fastest car, let’s take Budapest as an example, he crashes into Lewis, he slams his whole team, and he loses the plot.

“Straight away after that race, 25 per cent of his engineering team were sending their CVs to Mercedes, to McLaren, to Aston Martin, because they said they can’t deal with a guy like that.”

Horner scoffed at that, telling the Briton that perhaps he should focus on more pressing issues at Mercedes and not Red Bull’s personnel.

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“I’d be more worried about other issues if I was George,” the Red Bull team principal said as per Express newspaper. “I don’t know where he thinks and who he thinks they were offering their services to, but all the key people have made long-term commitments to the company.

“If you look at people like [Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase], and the key members of the engineering team, they are all on long-term contracts.

“One of the less pleasant sides of the business is the lengths that will be gone to try and capitalise on other issues in other teams.

“You have to remember that we came off a season where we didn’t just dominate, but we annihilated the opposition in 2023, and won 22 of 23 races.

“I’ve said it before, but the higher you rise, the sharper the knives, and they got pretty sharp at some points during 2024. But when there is so much at stake, other teams will use whatever tools they have to try and destabilise what has been a hugely successful team.”

Russell’s comment about the Red Bull CVs is not the first from Mercedes with Toto Wolff claiming he received many in early 2024 as the team dealt with the fall-out when Horner was investigated, and cleared, over his alleged behaviour towards a Red Bull staff member.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown started the conversation when he said McLaren had seen an “increase in CVs coming our way from Red Bull”. Wolff was then asked if Mercedes were receiving the same.

“Zak is absolutely correct, we are seeing Red Bull CVs through all the levels,” Wolff stated.

Horner hit back at that at the time, saying: “Mercedes, we’ve taken 220 people, 220, out of HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains] into Red Bull Powertrains so when we talk about losing people I would be more worried about the 220 than one or two CVs.”

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