Lewis Hamilton, George Russell reflect on social media allegations and accusations against Mercedes regarding potential favourtism.
With Hamilton leaving Mercedes and Russell staying, there has been ongoing discussions already about potential favourtism for the latter by the F1 team. After Monaco, Toto Wolff was philosophical about the former raising the update topic.
Russell had received the front wing update first which Hamilton got it in Canada. This somewhat started a chain reaction where fans on social media started to theorise about potential favourtism towards the former as he will stay on with the team.
The tyre strategy in Canada got more airtime too as fans on social media reckoned Mercedes didn’t put Hamilton on the right compound which could have helped him finish higher than he did and that they kind of gave Russell a better strategy.
It is usual social media blame game that happens which was brought to light to the Mercedes drivers during the media meet in Spanish GP. Hamilton pulled Russell away from any blame, while praising the team’s effort to bring itself back in the competition.
“I think [the fans] know it, if you look at the years, we’ve always been a strong team, we’ve always worked really hard together,” said Hamilton. “I think it is easy to get emotional. I even commented in the last race, for example, just about my performance. I think we need support, not negativity, and I wasn’t actually aware that George was experiencing negativity.
“George has done nothing but his best every single weekend and is delivering for the team, so he can’t be faulted at all. Of course, there can always be things done better within the team, and that comes through conversation, through communication, and that’s something that we are consistently working on. But we’re all in the same boat.
“We’re all working hard together. We want to finish on a high and feel that we owe that to our long-term relationship that we’ve had,” summed up Hamilton, who when asked about potential preferential treatment to Russell and team sabotaging Hamilton’s race, had no particular answer. “I just can’t comment, I haven’t seen anything like that,” he said.
Russell, meanwhile, noted about his presence on social media and how he handles it, while stating that he hasn’t seen much of what is going on against him or Mercedes. “Personally, I don’t look on Instagram or Twitter [X], to be honest,” he said. “I still sort of control my own account with my team, all of the content that goes out is through me and the captions, everything is all of my messaging.
“I think social media is really a double-edged sword. There are so many funny things that you see on social media and it keeps you up to date with so much but then on the flip side, it’s not just myself, but everybody is in the limelight. There seems to be negativity pointed towards them.
“And like Lewis said, you want to feel the support, not giving out negativity to others. As I said, it’s not something I’ve seen, I’ve heard about it. Of course, it’s never nice to hear this stuff. But that’s unfortunately the world we live in at the moment and any person in the public eye is facing.”
Here’s George Russell on Mercedes scrutiny
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on shocking Canadian GP
Here’s George Russell, Toto Wolff on podium
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