Former Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher has suggested that Valtteri Bottas should have perhaps refrained from his explicit radio message during the French Grand Prix, given the recent form he has shown.

The pressure is truly on the Finnish driver at the moment with speculation raging over George Russell potentially coming in and replacing him for 2022.

Indeed, in the last couple of races before the French Grand Prix we saw Bottas score 0 points, partly down to an unlucky retirement in Monaco but also thanks to a pretty off-colour display in Baku.

He was back among the leading pack on Sunday but Mercedes got their tyre strategy wrong and that saw him finish fourth, with him letting them know what he thought about the call during the race with a sweary radio broadcast.

Clearly, frustrations are there with Bottas at the moment who must be desperate to find some form and silence a few critics, with Ralf Schumacher one of them at the moment:

“I am amazed he dares to make such a radio message – in his place I would be very quiet at the moment,” Schumacher told Sky Germany.

“He probably knows he’s gone anyway. Whoever makes mistakes like he did, sorry – something like that doesn’t belong in the team.

“You need a strong team-mate to get strategies to work. He partly did that, but then again not well enough. His tyres deteriorated faster than with Lewis.

“[For me] we would have been talking about it long ago,” said the German. “Russell is sitting right there. After his race last year, that would have been clear to me [to replace Bottas].

“George Russell is a driver who can make more of a difference than Bottas is currently.”