Russell reached Q2 for the second race in a row by qualifying 12th for Williams at the Hungaroring, one place ahead of Red Bull driver Albon.
Albon struggled with balancing his Red Bull RB16 car during qualifying, and also made a couple of mistakes in his final Q2 run that meant the shooting was missed in the top 10.
Russell jumped into Albon’s defense after the session, saying that “he made him look like an idiot and that he is not at all,” and asked the Red Bull team to “work it out.”
When asked how much the Red Bull car had to rush in light of Albon’s difficulties and Russell’s comments, Verstappen said it was not the place where the Williams driver should comment.
“George doesn’t know anything about the team,” said Verstappen. “I think it’s better if you just focus on your car and your performance rather than speaking for someone else.”
“For my part, I think I always try to make the most of it, I try to push as hard as I can.”
“It doesn’t mean that if my car is not, say, able to get the pole position I surrender to. I still try, of course, to push it to the limit.”
Albon’s Q2 departure came after a difficult race in Austria last Sunday, where he finished 11 seconds behind Verstappen despite the Dutchman making an additional pit stop.
When asked by Motorsport.com how he would recover from these struggles, Albon said it would take time to overcome them.
“As a team, we had problems at the beginning of the season,” said Albon.
“Obviously it’s my first year on the team since the start of the season, so I’m in that process right now.”
“It is not what we want, but to say that I am still not happy with my qualifying performance. I still feel that my career was not ideal and I definitely made some mistakes, so we would have been in Q3 if it hadn’t been.” Not for that.
“Still, it’s not one of the top five places we should really be in, and it’s obviously more difficult to drive when the car is not doing what you want it to do.”
“I’m sure we are going to catch up. I know the guys are working at full blast in the factory and despite the problems, we are improving the car so it is slowly coming up.”
“As Red Bull has done in previous seasons, I am confident we will grow stronger towards the end.”
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