Red Bull Racing protest Russell's driving behind Safety Car during Canadian GP

Russell took the chequered flag at the Canadian Grand Prix that ended under a Safety Car deployed after Lando Norris crashed into the back of Oscar Piastri towards the end of the race.

However, during the Safety Car period, Max Verstappen braked heavily as he almost overtook Russell and radioed his team, telling them that the Briton braked suddenly.

"George suddenly just aggressively braked," Verstappen told race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, who responded: "Understood. Thank you. We will check for any erratic driving."

Russell, on the other hand, radioed his team, claiming that Verstappen tried to overtake him behind the Safety Car. He said: "Verstappen just overtook me under the Safety Car."

Marcus Dudley, Russell's race engineer, replied: "Understood: We’ll look."

Lambiase then radioed Verstappen saying: "That incident with Russell now being shown on the feeds, Max. It looks pretty blatant. Just don't fall for the gamesmanship, thank you."

After that, it emerged after the race that Red Bull Racing had submitted a protest with the stewards complaining about Russell's driving.

Red Bull Racing Christian Horner said: "Two protests that we've put to the stewards, that we've asked them to have a look at.

"Firstly relating to the erratic driving behind the Safety Car, where George very heavily braked, obviously looking in his mirror for Max.

"Then the second one is very clearly the distance that was left behind the Safety Car that was well in excess, I think at least three times in excess, of the permitted distance.

"It's within our right to obviously protest that, so we've lodged the protest, it's with the stewards now, and we'll see what they say," Horner concluded.

Verstappen commented on the Safety Car incident; he said: “I think we were both trying to say to the Safety Car to speed up because he was only going 120kph, but I think maybe it was doing that to give a bit more time to maybe get a race lap in.

“So George was trying to speed up to the Safety Car and I was trying to do the same. Once, he tried to speed up to the Safety Car he backed out and it caused a bit of confusion," he added.

But Horner accused Russell of playing games trying to get Verstappen in trouble, as the reigning Formula 1 champion is just one penalty point away from a race ban following his incident with the Mercedes driver during the Spanish Grand Prix.

He said: "I think you could hear from George's press comments yesterday, his objective was reasonably clear. I don't think there was any surprises with that.

"I think that it's inevitable that there was going to be some potential gamesmanship. It's something that we raised after the drivers' briefing with the race director, just so that they were mindful of it as well because it's clear that kind of stuff goes on,

"But Max, I thought he's been squeaky clean all weekend and drove a very good race today," the Red Bull boss insisted.

"We just said to him [the race director] could they please keep an eye on it because, there's been, obviously, comments that have been raised in the media, just please keep an eye on it," he revealed.

There was not decision from the stewards at the time this article was published.