The real reason Russell was forced to retire from Canadian GP

Russell spent the early phase of the race running in fourth behind Fernando Alonso and teammate Lewis Hamilton.

However, his good work was undone on Lap 12 when he hit the kerb at the Turn 8-9 chicane, clattering the barrier in the process.

This damaged Russell’s car considerably, forcing him into the pit lane, while race control were forced to deploy the Safety Car.

Remarkably, Russell was able to continue, making his way back into the top 10.

Russell ran behind Williams’ Alex Albon in eighth before he was called into the pit lane to retire the car.

As confirmed by Wolff afterwards, the shunt caused further issues with brake cooling, meaning it would have been unsafe to let Russell continue in the race.

"The oxidation matrices were high on both cars,” Wolff said after the race.

“But after he hit the wall, interestingly the oxidation matrix went dramatically up on the left and at that stage, we felt we wouldn't finish the race so we retired the car.”

Russell believes the considerable time stuck in traffic behind other cars contributed to it.

“It was all quite sudden when it was too late,” he explained. “I think the thing with brakes, once you go over a certain oscillation threshold, there’s no recovering.

“It doesn’t matter how much you nurse them. They’re just on a rate you can’t recover.”