"Mafia are back; Checo was in the sleep-mode today" - Fans deliver judgement on George Russell-Sergio Perez intense wheel-to-wheel battle at 2022 F1 French GP

George Russell secured his fourth podium of the 2022 season with a third-place finish at the French Grand Prix last weekend after having an exciting battle with Red Bull's Sergio Perez.

For a while, the two drivers engaged in wheel-to-wheel racing to come out on top until lap 50, where the Mexican appeared to have opened the door for Russell, allowing him to easily pass and secure the position. Fans took to the internet to share their reactions towards the incident, claiming that Perez seemed to be napping.

Describing the overtaking maneuver in a post-race interaction, George Russell said:

“I had to sort of preempt it [slowing before accelerating quickly] and it can go both ways. I knew I had one opportunity when the VSC was ending and if you can time it right and you carry the momentum, you can just carry that through after the VSC. I think he may have been a little bit too quick and had to brake. So he’s braking, I’m accelerating and that gave me an opportunity.”

Earlier in the race, the two drivers made contact after having a collision, where the Mercedes driver appeared to have forced Perez into the run-off area. Fans were not happy, to say the least, when race control confirmed that the Briton would not receive a penalty for the same.

Here are some fan reactions to George Russell's move on Sergio Perez at the French GP:

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Mercedes must avoid "experimenting too much", says George Russell

After a rough start to the 2022 season, Mercedes has managed to make solid progress over the first half of the year and will be heading to the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix with quite the momentum from a double podium finish last weekend at Circuit Paul Ricard. George Russell, however, believes it is time for the Silver Arrows to head in the same direction but slow down with the experimenting now that the team seems to have finally found its groove.

As reported by PlanetF1, the Briton said:

“When you’re so far off the pace, you want to try everything on your car to try to close the gap. And maybe that’s a lesson for us, that we need to almost focus on ourselves and really focus on trying to get the most out of the car rather than experimenting too much. But we need to experiment at this moment to see what does work and what doesn’t work. It’s a little bit tricky at the moment.”

He continued:

“There’s definitely optimism because we feel like we do have a direction to keep chipping away at and we do think that we will make good progress. Qualifying is the day where you have that clearest pace comparison to your rivals and it is clearly a bit difficult when we see how far we were from pole. But the race is where we need to judge. We do have a faster car than we have done on average this season.”

After securing back-to-back podium finishes over the last few weekends, Mercedes comfortably stands third in the Constructor Standings and is quickly closing the gap to Ferrari.

It will be interesting to see whether the German team will be able to overtake the Scuderia in the constructors' championship.