Mercedes 'Mr Nice Guy' mocked after F1 team orders rant

George Russell’s ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ persona has been mocked after his F1 outburst at the Mexican Grand Prix.

Far from the controlled English gentleman Russell often portrays to the media, a wave of fury was unleashed by the Brit over team radio in Mexico City to his race engineer Marcus Dudley.

Russell started with a simple request to the team to let him past team-mate Kimi Antonelli, who the Brit believed he was faster than, so he could then overtake Ollie Bearman for fourth.

“We got a Ferrari [Charles Leclerc] and a Haas ahead, we can fight for the podium here. I'm happy to give the position back to Kimi if I can't overtake Bearman,” Russell requested.

When his request was not granted, Russell continued to advocate for himself and said: “We're just compromising both our races. I've got much more pace here, guys."

During this period of time, Oscar Piastri managed to close into the rear of Russell’s Mercedes, which led to a more frantic, X-rated outburst from the Brit to Dudley.

The race engineer instructed Russell to manage the ‘rear surface temperatures' of his tyres, to which Russell responded: “Marcus, I've got a ****ing car in my ****. A car much quicker than ours.

"I'm trying to hold position. I've got much more pace than Kimi here and we can fight for a podium. I'm happy to give the position back if we don't achieve it."

Was Russell’s anger justified?

Eventually, Mercedes relented and Antonelli gave the position to his team-mate on lap 42, although the damage had been done for Russell, who responded with a sarcastic: “Oh, great."

Russell ended the race in seventh, giving the position back to Antonelli who finished ahead of his team-mate in Mexico.

However, Russell’s outburst didn’t go down well with F1 pundit Ralf Schumacher, who criticised the Brit’s attitude on the Sky Sports Germany podcast Backstage Boxengasse.

While Schumacher did agree that Mercedes’ team orders call took too long, he still mocked Russell’s team radio messages.

“If there was one thing I didn’t like at the weekend, [it was] the whining and outbursts and emotions of ‘Mr. Nice Guy’, in this case, George Russell,” Schumacher said.

Mercedes’ chief communications officer Bradley Lord, who replaced Toto Wolff at the Mexican GP after taking a planned absence, reflected on the incident after the race.

“It was a tricky situation, and we probably didn’t get everything right in how we managed it,” Lord explained.

“The lesson is really that we should have been more decisive either in asking to hold position or swapping the positions rather than waiting the time we did.”

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