“A Bit Of a Shame”: George Russell Displeased With Max Verstappen’s Stubbornness Around Recent FIA Rule Change

The issue of porpoising has dominated the 2022 season thus far. Drivers such as George Russell and Lewis Hamilton have been vocal about the safety risk of the issue. But after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the FIA decided to intervene to help act on the concern of some teams and drivers.

But the sport is not unanimous in terms of calling porpoising a safety issue as of yet. Russell recently revealed that there are mixed agendas among the teams regarding the issues and how they want to tackle them.

“There’s obviously a lot of mixed agendas here from different teams and drivers. We’ve heard it from Carlos at times, and Checo (Sergio Perez) and Max earlier in the season how bad it’s been, but now that their performance seems to be strong, they obviously don’t want to change because it can only hinder them.

So it’s obviously a bit of a shame to see performance prioritized over safety, but there’s no doubt that in Baku, I could see my pit board but I couldn’t read my pit board because I was bouncing around so much,” said the Mercedes driver.

READ MORE: Why Do Mercedes Dominate F1?

But not everyone agrees with his comments on the issue. F1 world champion and Red Bull driver Max Verstappen is not in favor of having a mid-season rule change after the intervention of the FIA.

Max Verstappen disagrees with George Russell on the porpoising issue

Verstappen mentioned that the teams that are not struggling do not deserve to be impacted by the technical directives. He revealed that F1 teams should themselves fix the issue by raising their ride heights.

“I think it’s a bit disappointing that again there is a rule change mid-season, I would say. I think there are a lot of teams that actually did an amazing job to not have these kinds of issues, so it is possible to drive around it.

If you raise your car, then you won’t have these issues, but you lose performance. But if you can’t design the car properly for that then that’s your fault. It’s not the regs’ fault. For me, that is a bit of a shame,” said the Red Bull driver.

WATCH THE STORY: Who is Angela Cullen? Fun facts about Lewis Hamilton’s blonde assistant!

It is certainly interesting to hear varying opinions from the drivers. But it would be fascinating to see what the technical change does to the Mercedes pair.