Red Bull protest Russell's third place, stewards reject it

Red Bull's four-time Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen finished fourth in the race, 2.312 seconds behind Russell, after starting on pole position. McLaren's Oscar Piastri won, ahead of teammate Lando Norris.

During the race, Verstappen asked his team to check whether Russell had slowed down sufficiently and later his race engineer told him to stay within five seconds of Russell hinting as a protest.

After the protest was ruled admissible to be heard, stewards then declared it to be unfounded.

Red Bull had alleged Russell had failed to slow when yellow flags were waved during a virtual safety car period.
A five-second time penalty would have promoted Verstappen onto the podium.

"We've registered a protest with the (governing) FIA regarding George Russell," Red Bull boss Christian Horner told reporters.

"From the GPS that we can see quite clearly while he did lift he did not reduce speed and the regulation is quite explicitly clear that there has to be a reduction of speed.

"The car has kept accelerating, just at a slower rate than it would normally," Horner concluded.

The Stewards said in a statement that onboard footage and telemetry showed Russell had lifted the throttle by some 25% when passing the yellow flag zone.

(Reporting by Matt Majendie, writing by Alan Baldwin, Additional reporting by GrandPrix247)