George Russell wants F1 to investigate Daniel Ricciardo after Canadian GP

George Russell has jokingly called for an immediate investigation after an incident with Daniel Ricciardo at the Canadian Grand Prix. Russell joked that he spotted a “rogue Australian” swearing at him as he drove through the pits in practice.

He laughed that Ricciardo’s remark would be spotted if bosses rewound video footage. The Mercedes driver continued to joke that FIA bosses should be investigating the incident

He said: “There was a rogue Australian fan in the pit lane as well at some point. I don’t know what it was, he stuck his finger up on me or something when I was waiting to go out.

“It was around the Red Bull area, they need to check the video and see if an investigation should go into this.” Footage taken from the side of the track shows Ricciardo leaning over the pit wall and sticking his middle finger up at the Mercedes star.

He quickly turns his head back around and laughs with Red Bull mechanics while Russell sits at the end of the pit lane. Mercedes will go into Saturday with some optimism after a strong Friday yielded a bizarre result.

Hamilton topped the timesheets in FP2, just a couple of hundredths of a second faster than Russell who was P2. It comes just two weeks after Mercedes secured their first double podium of the season in Spain.

The team introduced a series of new upgrades at the Monaco Grand Prix which have generated an instant uptick in performances. Despite topping the leaderboard, Russell was still cautious about where they likely sit in the pecking order.

Russell commented: “It’s obviously been a bit of a strange day. We’ve obviously saw what happened in FP1 and then the extension of FP2. It was a reasonably productive session. Okay, we can read too much into the timings. Obviously, we did a low fuel qualifying prep towards the end of the session when the track was quicker.”

He added: “We need to find out where we’re going to be. I think we’re still on the tail end especially in qualifying pace compared to Ferrari and Aston Martin. Valtteri looked quick, maybe an Alpine.

“But you know, we always know it comes to us on a Sunday so that’s when it’s going to matter. Looks to be wet tomorrow so let’s see what it brings.”