Jacques Villeneuve questions stewards’ decisions in Spain: “George Russell also forced a collision”. Jacques Villeneuve believes George Russell also deserved a penalty in Spain.

The Canadian Grand Prix is the first race on the calendar after the event in Barcelona, where a late-race collision occurred between Max Verstappen and George Russell. That incident led the stewards to penalise the four-time world champion with a ten-second time penalty and three points added to his FIA Super Licence. As a result, the Red Bull driver arrives in Montreal with 11 points out of a maximum of 12 — the threshold that would trigger an automatic one-race suspension if reached.

Max Verstappen-George Russell: the incident after the restart
This is a situation Red Bull will be keen to avoid, hoping that their driver avoids any mistakes or rule breaches during the race weekend at the circuit named after Gilles Villeneuve. However, according to his son Jacques, the race stewards’ decisions in Spain were not fair. Even before the collision between the two drivers, during the restart after the safety car returned to the pits, George Russell pushed car #1 off at Turn 1, forcing Max Verstappen to take the escape road. This manoeuvre went unpunished, unlike the one carried out by Verstappen shortly afterward.

Double standards?
These contrasting decisions did not sit well with the Canadian, as he explained in an interview with BetVictorCasino: “It wasn’t intentional — it happened in the heat of the moment,” Jacques Villeneuve said about Max Verstappen’s move. “Verstappen wanted to take back his position immediately, but he completely misjudged it. Then people started shouting that he did it on purpose. The absurd part is that George Russell should have received a penalty: he hit Verstappen’s rear wheel on entry to the first corner. According to the rules, that counts as forcing a collision and pushing another driver off the track. So why didn’t he get penalised for it? If there are rules, they should apply to everyone. Russell deserved a penalty. Verstappen knows he doesn’t have the best car and, to get results, he has to drive on — or even beyond — the limit. At some point, that leads to errors in judgment, and that makes his fight for the world title much more difficult.”