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Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft apologized to George Russell for a coincidence in his comments leading to his crash in recent outings.
The Mercedes driver crashed out of the Australian GP on the penultimate lap while chasing Fernando Alonso for P6. Russell was unable to control his W15 after he encountered dirty air from Alonso's AMR24 while heading into a fast section of the Albert Park Circuit.
However, an F1 fan noticed the similarity between his crash in Melbourne and last year in Singapore as on the telecast David Croft could be seen saying, “You can hear the cheers of the crowd” just before George Russell's crash in both the races.
The Sky Sports commentator on his social media platform X, apologized to the young Brit while also applauding the fan for his research. He said:
"Oh dear, has the commentator's curse struck again?!!! I’m so sorry George. Got to say though I’m impressed with the research here."
As per F1.com, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff did not mince his words while speaking about George Russell's crash in the race and hinted at Fernando Alonso's involvement in the incident. He said:
"For George, it was clear that Alonso braked earlier than he had on previous laps. It is now with the stewards to determine what caused that."
George Russell analyzes his Australian Grand Prix crash
George Russell stated that he was 'okay' after a big crash at the Albert Park Circuit and claimed that he was surprised by Alonso's sudden maneuvers. As quoted by the aforementioned source, the Mercedes driver said:
"I’m OK after the accident, fortunately. I don’t really know how to explain what happened. I was half a second behind Fernando (Alonso) 100 meters before the corner and then suddenly he came back towards me extremely quickly.
"It was clear that he braked earlier than he had done on previous laps and then got back on the throttle. I wasn’t expecting that, and it caught me by surprise. I hit the wall and had a dramatic few seconds after that. It was a disappointing end to a difficult race."
It will be fascinating to see if the German team can bounce back in the upcoming races in Japan and China and extract maximum performance from the W15 with the current setup.
Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell would hope that the problems they have faced in the first three races are behind them for the rest of the campaign.
