It was not a weekend to remember for Mercedes, thanks to two accidents that had a major impact on the Star’s ambitions not only to get to the podium, but also to achieve a result useful to contain Ferrari’s return to the world rankings.
George Russell had started from third position, managing to defend it at the start. After an early stop that put him back in traffic, also taking advantage of the penalty awarded to Max Verstappen for an accident on the first lap with Charles Leclerc, the Briton from Mercedes managed to get behind the Red Bull driver.
In an attempt to catch up with the Ferrari driver, during the twenty-fifth lap Verstappen attempted to attack Russell at the braking point at turn twelve, with the two coming into contact. The stewards judged the Englishman to be responsible for the accident, assigning him a penalty for having closed the inside trajectory excessively. The Mercedes driver suffered only minor damage to his wheel cover, and was able to continue without any particular problems. On the contrary, the one who suffered a worse fate was the Dutchman’s wing, which was damaged in the endplate area.
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Mercedes-AMG makes a pit stop on George Russell’s car, Mercedes F1 W14
The debris left on the track then led to the Safety Car coming out which, in fact, significantly changed the Briton’s race, depriving him of a possible podium. “Everything was very simple until the accident with Max. I didn’t see him, he was in the blind spot. I wasn’t expecting the overtaking,” said Russell, who however explained that his objective was not so much to defend himself from Max, because he knew he had a potentially worse pace.
“I wasn’t even fighting with him because we knew our race wasn’t with Max. We just had to keep the tires alive. It would have been a comfortable podium, thrown away once again. This season is really disappointing. Very frustrating,” he added the pilot of the Star. Due to the very low set-up chosen for this Grand Prix and the difficulties in managing graining shown during free practice, undoubtedly for Mercedes the primary objective was to safeguard the tires rather than fight with the adversaries. This is why there is a certain disappointment, because the Safety Car gave other drivers the opportunity to stop and continue, gaining a significant advantage.
“If there hadn’t been the Safety Car, we would have continued and been on the podium. I don’t really know what to say. I’m just very frustrated with today.”
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
George Russell, Mercedes-AMG, is interviewed after the race
In fact, after the entry of the safety car Russell found himself in ninth position, behind Alex Albon, who undoubtedly made high top speeds one of the key elements during this weekend. Having lost time behind the Anglo-Thai, the Mercedes standard-bearer’s comeback only ended on the last lap, with an overtaking on Esteban Ocon which gave him fourth place. However, due to the penalty received for the contact with Verstappen, the Englishman slipped back to eighth position: “When the car is fast, luck always seems to be on your side. And when the car isn’t, it seems that you never get lucky. Ultimately, the pace wasn’t fast enough. A lot of these problems are due to the car not being fast enough.”
“With the hard tire I felt quite competitive. Except that we were all stuck behind Alex [Albon] for quite some time. We know they have good straight line speed and it was difficult to overtake them,” added Russell.
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