George Russell has claimed one-quarter of Red Bull's engineering team sent their CVs to rival teams following Max Verstappen's outburst in Hungary earlier this year.
Verstappen endured a difficult Hungarian Grand Prix and delivered a series of heated radio messages throughout the race, voicing his displeasure with the team's strategy.
In Qatar, a feud ignited between Verstappen and Russell, which was born from an incident in qualifying that resulted in a one-place grid drop for Verstappen.
The situation has escalated in Abu Dhabi with both drivers taking aim at one another. In the latest twist, Russell has declared many Red Bull employees looked to exit the team after the Hungarian race.
“He's had the most dominant car in recent history for two and a half years,” Russell told media including RacingNews365.
“I'm not questioning his driving abilities one single bit - but the second he does not have the fastest car, let’s take Budapest as an example, he crashes into Lewis, he slams his whole team, and he loses the plot.
“Straight away after that race, 25 per cent of his engineering team were sending their CVs to Mercedes, to McLaren to Aston Martin, because they said they can't deal with a guy like that.
“Since Austria, he's won the same number of races as six other drivers. So when you say is Max beatable? Of course, he's beatable.
“When he's in the most dominant car, he is not beatable the same way as Lewis and I, when we had the most dominant car in Silverstone in Las Vegas, we were not beatable.”
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Russell confused by Verstappen anger
Verstappen took aim at Russell in Qatar after alleging the Mercedes driver heavily lobbied for Verstappen to be issued a grid drop.
The four-time champion insisted he lost all respect for his rival following the incident.
Russell has since claimed Verstappen threatened to deliberately crash into him at the start of the race but admitted confusion as to why the Dutchman is so upset.
“I walked into that stewards [meeting] with no problem with Max,” he said. “I walked out of that stewards [meeting] with no problem with Max.
“I went back, I told my team, and we laughed about it, and then I woke up the next day, and I was expecting to have a laugh about it.
“But I saw the fire in his eyes. so I don't know why this topic has got him so angry. Like I said to you before, he cannot deal with adversity.”
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