Williams' George Russell has vowed that his crash with Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas won't change his approach to racing his rivals, but that he has learned lessons from the incident. Russell was involved in a high-speed crash at Imola, hitting Bottas' Mercedes as he attempted to pass the Finn into Turn 1. Russell was furious after the impact, approaching Bottas to admonish him before a very public war of words in the media pen afterwards. Now that the dust has settled, Russell said there's a few things he can take away from the crash. “There was a lot of things I have taken away from it,” he told Channel 4 ahead of the Portuguese GP. “I think, firstly, as a racing driver, one of the rules is that you should never crash with a team-mate and for me, personally, obviously Valtteri is in a different car, but I am a Mercedes-backed driver, I am in the position because of Mercedes. “Lewis and Valtteri are team-mates to me of sorts. And I think that is one thing that didn’t go through my mind in the heat of the moment.” Russell admitted to feeling disappointment with his own furious reaction, having gently smacked Bottas' helmet as he turned away from the Finn after the crash. “I felt like I wasn’t me. I went against my own instincts to walk away from the incident because I wanted to show a bit of emotion. And, to be honest, my emotions were incredibly high having just crashed at 200mph. So many things ran through my mind.” “It isn’t going to change my racing approach when I’m racing against competitors. If I see an opportunity, if I see a gap, I’m going to go for it. “But definitely, I’ve learned that I need to handle things differently afterwards. I need to really take the full picture in before giving a rash judgement to the situation which is what I did on Sunday night. "Hence why I felt like it was important to put an apology out there for the people that I felt I let down with those actions after the race.”
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