Verstappen takes a swipe at Russell: “He’ll probably start crying again.”

The moment occurred at the start of Q3, when the F1 drivers left the pits for their first flying lap. Verstappen exited just in front of Russell, but there was no dangerous situation. The two cars never came close to making contact, and Russell didn’t need to take any evasive action.

Verstappen decided to immediately comment on it to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. “We’ll probably hear George crying about this on the radio, but there was nothing unsafe about it,” said the four-time world champion over team radio.

Whether Russell actually said anything about Verstappen at that moment cannot be determined with complete certainty. During the broadcast, no radio message from the Mercedes driver was aired in which he complained about the incident. Moreover, his onboard camera was off at that time, which means not everything said over the Mercedes team radio may have been audible.

Based on the available footage, however, the complaint Verstappen predicted does not appear to have materialised, although this cannot be confirmed definitively due to the lack of Russell’s onboard images.