George Russell says he appreciated hearing Mercedes boss Toto Wolff's voice on the radio at the height of his battle with Sergio Perez in the French Grand Prix.
Russell locked on to Perez in the final ten laps of the race but the Briton struggled to find a way past.
A run up the inside of the Mexican at the Mistral chicane resulted in a minor contact between the two drivers that forced Perez to run straight on.
Russell argued over the radio that the corner was his and that Perez should cede back the position. But his Mercedes team disagreed, and so did the stewards ultimately who investigated the move but took no action.
The moment of contact between Sergio Perez and George Russell! 💥#FrenchGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/wNtGn73cK9
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A rattled Russell continued to squabble with his team over the radio until Wolff intervened: "George, keep your head down, you can hunt him down," quipped the Mercedes boss.
Russell got the message and put his head down, earning in the end his spot on the podium thanks to a Virtual Safety Car that enabled him to outgun Perez on the race's restart.
"I think emotions are high there for all of us," he said after the race. "I felt like I did a mega move on Checo, and ultimately didn’t get to keep the position.
"We definitely had a bit more pace there. I quite enjoyed hearing Toto on the radio, but ultimately from my side, you’re going absolutely flat out.
"We’re in this together as a team, and when you’re sat in the car, sometimes you do feel a bit alone because we’re in the car, we’re doing everything we can and you don’t know what the engineers are looking at, the engineers don’t totally feel what we’re feeling within the car, and sometimes having these exchanges brings it a little bit closer together."
Over at Mission Control in the Mercedes garage, Wolff explained why he felt the need to intervene.
"I felt like he was a little bit stuck in a loop of being upset about the situation," said the Austrian.
"As a driver, you are stuck in your little cockpit and I felt like he had the pace, he just needed to drop the upsetness and concentrate to beat him on track.
"In the end, it was just clever. There was a bit of confusion with the Virtual Safety Car and he just did it."
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