Toto Wolff certainly wasn't in the mood to entertain George Russell 's rant at Mercedes during the French Grand Prix after the young Brit lost his cool amid a fierce battle with Sergio Perez.
The Mercedes racer was scrapping with his Red Bull rival for a spot on the podium in the final few laps of the race. And there was a flashpoint when the pair came close to making contact when Russell went to duck up the inside as they entered a corner.
Both came out unscathed, as Perez bailed out and zoomed up the emergency run-off area and came back onto the track some way up the road from the Mercedes man. That prompted a furious outburst from Russell, who felt he should be allowed to move back into third place.
"Come on, guys. We need to do something. He went straight on," ranted the former Williams racer over team radio. It was clear his race engineer disagreed, as he quickly replied: "George, we were not ahead."
But that wasn't a good enough response for Russell, who countered: "Front wheel to rear wheel is the rule. It's the rule when you're attacking – I was definitely front wheel to rear wheel."
Clearly unimpressed that his racer was busy arguing instead of being focussed upon chasing Perez down, Wolff felt he needed to intervene. He jumped on the airwaves himself and bluntly told Russell: "George, keep your head down, you can hunt him down."
He managed to do so, getting the jump on Perez as a virtual safety car period ended to join Lewis Hamilton on the podium. And after the race, Wolff explained why he felt he need to personally intervene in that heated radio row.
"As a driver you get so upset with the situation. You feel that what has happened is not right," he told Sky Sports . "You also don't see the helicopter view. I think he had pace at the time, and could catch him on track. So I wanted to re-set him mentally."
Wolff was back on the radio in the immediate aftermath of the race to congratulate his drivers on their results. "To both of you, really, really good!" he yelled. "We're lacking pace, we know there's certain stages of the weekend that we pushed so hard to bring you back in the position to win. But two and three is something."
