The recently concluded race in Jeddah, barring a little incident at the start, was a clean affair. The drama only began to unfold itself after the conclusion of the race. FIA found Fernando Alonso in violation of incorrectly serving his 5-second time penalty and resultantly gave him another 10-second penalty. That decision put 4th placed George Russell in the 3rd, gifting him his first podium of the season. While the ruling body revoked that decision later, Lewis Hamilton did not take well to it.

As the race progressed to Lap 28, Hamilton began chasing Russell down for P4. The medium compound tire worked wonders for the 7x champion, who kept on gaining on his teammate. To avoid any fight with Lewis, George asked his race engineer to tell his teammate to stay put as he was chasing Alonso, who was carrying a 5-second penalty. To his embarrassment, they told Russell that the Spaniard had served his penalty. Regardless, the junior Mercedes driver did not let Lewis pass.

Has the Saudi Arabian GP sowed the seed of rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell?

Until last year, despite Russell finishing ahead of Hamilton on points and even getting a race win, denied any friction between them. Even the 38-year-old ruled out any rivalry but that looks to be changing in 2023. Reacting to George getting P3 post-race, Lewis said, “That’s got nothing to do with me, but it’s good for the team, sure.”

The comment sent fans down memory lane when the Briton had as fierce a personality off the track as on it. Take a look at some reactions from Twitter.

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Some fans wondered if this was the start of an “evil” Lewis era. He’s been too nice in the past few years. Clearly, fans missed this side of him.

One fan hoped this attitude will fuel the entire team Mercedes up.

The rivalry between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg is one of the fiercest teammate v teammate actions modern F1 has witnessed. Surely Russell would not want that to start again with him on the receiving end this time.

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Do you think a rivalry between their two teammates is something Mercedes needs as of now? Surely they have got too much on their plate already. Toto Wolff has witnessed what the Hamilton-Rosberg rivalry was like and will surely nip any such recurrence in the bud.