George Russell has accused Ferrari of being "selfish" in blocking changes to race start procedures.

The Italian team had warned of potential safety issues last year, but found no support from its rivals, but in the aftermath of events in Melbourne, Mercedes, in particular has been calling for a rethink.

In pre-season testing it was clear that the Italian team had an advantage with its starts, and this proved to be the case in Australia, whilst both Mercedes struggled getting off the line.

With an eye on the potential disaster involving Liam Lawson and Franco Colapinto, Mercedes called for a change to the rule which governs how much energy a car can harvest on the formation lap, but Ferrari vetoed the proposal.

"The FIA was looking to potentially adjust that but as you can imagine some teams who were making good starts didn't want it, which I think is just a little bit silly," said Russell, who, as it happens, called for a change to the budget cap regulations after Mercedes was unable to gift him one of his former cars.

"The FIA just wanted to make our life easier and remove this harvest limit," he added, "but people have selfish views and they want to do what's best for themselves."

While the FIA has to make such a change without approval, on safety grounds, it has thus far opted not to do so.

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