George Russell wants ’10 second’ penalty for Lando Norris after Hungarian GP

George Russell has joked that Lando Norris deserves a 10-second penalty for smashing Max Verstappen’s Hungarian Grand Prix trophy. The Dutchman was presented a porcelain vase for winning the race in Budapest but footage of the podium celebrations showed McLaren’s Norris accidentally damaging it.

Norris reproduced his now trademark celebration of banging his bottle of champagne off the top step. In doing so however, the reverberations of the smash accidentally saw the cup tumble on to the floor and break into two pieces. The British racer and his good friend Verstappen were spotted laughing about the matter while still stood on the podium as the podium music played.

In an interview with Sky Sports’ F1 Juniors, Russell was shown footage of Norris’ trophy-smashing antics. After witnessing the vase tumble and shatter, the Mercedes driver said: “What?! You are kidding me! What happened… that’s surely got to be like a 10 second penalty!

“That is awful. What is he thinking? He needs to go to Specsavers maybe.” A retrospective 10 second penalty would have course seen Russell’s team-mate Lewis Hamilton upgraded from P4 to P3 to pick up an extra three points from the race. It would’ve seen Red Bull’s Sergio Perez promoted to second with Norris dropping to fourth.

In a chat with one of Sky Sports F1’s junior presenters Scarlett in the media pen, Norris joshed: “That is Max’s [trophy], mine is in perfect shape.” Asked what happened, he said: “Aw I don’t care. It’s broken.”

Asked then how he broke it, Norris laughed: “Happily. It wasn’t on purpose!” After Scarlett joked the McLaren star just wanted to be the race winner that badly, Lando said: “I do, I was annoyed I was P2! No that is my celebration, to hit the bottle. Max put his trophy in the wrong place. It’s Max’s fault.”

Scarlett then caught Verstappen for a chat and informed him that Norris thinks the incident was his own fault. The Red Bull race-winner reacted: “I gave you a yellow card, you know like in football. A red card! I just said that I’ll go to Zak because he has a bit of spare money still for personnel in the team so I guess he can also spend it on a trophy.”

Norris then responded: “Alright mate, just cause you’ve got the quickest car! Relax! If I can’t get it, you break it, then no one has it.” The pair provided some welcome amusement after Verstappen eased to another race win, his ninth of 11 races in 2023. Norris and the two-time world champion known to be good friends.

Norris said to talkSPORT this month: “I think me and Max are very good friends, I guess we’ve grown up, not exactly together as we didn’t fully race until Formula One, but we’ve grown up in a similar generation and similar time.

“We have the correct amount of respect away from the track where you can get on and be mates and it’s not like we see each other every day or text each other but we get along and sometimes bump into each other and go for dinner or go for a crepe or whatever it is.”