Bottas warns Russell "I could have been a lot more aggressive"

Valtteri Bottas has warned George Russell he could have been far more aggressive in the build-up to their catastrophic crash in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Both drivers blamed one another for the accident, turning the air blue with their foul language over the radio, while Russell confronted Bottas as he sat in the cockpit of his battered Mercedes, leading to a middle-finger response from the Finn.

Ultimately, the stewards determined neither driver was at fault and that what unfolded was simply "a racing accident".

Facing a barrage of questions from the media post-race over the incident, Bottas at one point quipped: “Sorry, I lost my aluminium foil [tin] hat.”

Asked for comment on Russell's allegation he only drove as he did due to the pair's direct competition to secure a seat at Mercedes next year, Bottas explained: "I am always going to defend from any driver.

"I am not keen to lose any positions. That was normal defending. I could have been a lot more aggressive if needed so I don’t agree with any of that at all.

“I was doing my thing and whoever I had have been defending from it would have been exactly the same."

Rather than shouldering the blame, Bottas went on the attack and said Russell should have known it was too wet to go offline on slicks at that moment.

“Obviously, he knew it was going to be damp there because we had gone there lap after lap," added Bottas.

"I knew as well it was just not a place to go in those conditions on slicks but he still went there.

“It was his choice to go there and I was doing my job trying to defend. I’m not going to move away and give him the dry track. That’s how it goes.”

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