Karun Chandhok comes out in defense of George Russell terming him one of the 'cleanest racers'

F1 pundit Karun Chandhok mentioned that Mercedes driver George Russell is currently 'one of the cleanest drivers' on the F1 grid, during his run-in with reigning double world champion Max Verstappen in the Sprint race at the F1 Azerbaijan GP on Saturday.

The Mercedes driver was embroiled in a wheel-to-wheel battle against the Red Bull driver at the start of the Sprint race and successfully took P3 from him. However, the move wasn't clean as he collided with the side of Verstappen's RB19, which caused a hole in the sidepod of the car.

Both drivers had an altercation in Parc Ferme where the world champion confronted George Russell and called him a 'd***head'. Chandhok, on his social media platform, defended the Briton and said:

"I understand why Max was upset especially with the adrenalin flowing after the race, but @GeorgeRussell63 clearly didn’t intend to make contact. George is generally one of the cleanest racers & the amount of steering lock shows he was trying hard to avoid contact."

"Red Bull would still be quicker than us on the straights" - George Russell

Russell stated that the speed difference between them and the Austrian team is massive and even without a rear wing, they could overtake Mercedes on the track.

As per Motorsport.com, he said:

"We know what the speed difference is. I think we believe we could take the rear wing fully off, and Red Bull would still be quicker than us on the straights, and that's not even a joke. So we don't understand what they're doing. They've clearly done something incredible... Something very, very trick."

"And kudos to them for whatever they've done to achieve this straight-line performance. But especially with the DRS, as I said, we believe we can take the rear wing fully off and they'd still be quicker than us. So something's not adding up from our side."

After finishing P8 in the main race, George Russell showcased optimism heading into Miami next week, adding:

“We’ve done quite a good job of improving the car across the course of the weekend, but I think we got the set-up in the wrong place for where it needed to be. I trust in Miami we will be able to do a better job.”

It will be interesting to see if George Russell can challenge Max Verstappen once again in Miami and this time finish ahead of him.