It was a massively frustrating Saturday for George Russell at the Hungarian Grand Prix as he was knocked out in Q1, alongside Sergio Pérez.
On the first set of tyres, Russell was tentative and he could only manage P14 fastest. The 26-year-old also had a moment at turn 8 but carried on.
He took responsibility for the first run as he was over a second slower than teammate Lewis Hamilton.
“Well, it was on me at the beginning. I didn’t think it was going to rain again, so I just thought the track would get quicker.
“I took an easy lap one and suddenly it starts raining, and that was the most important lap, but it didn’t matter.”
Pérez crashed halfway through the session as the rain started to gently fall. By the end of Q1, however, the track was dry once again.
Along with the Saubers, Russell went out earlier than the rest of the grid. He did a push-push run, only moving up to P10.
With no more fuel, he could not complete a lap right at the end, and the 2-time race winner fell to 17th.
“The end was the quickest, and we had no fuel in the car to finish the session. No idea how that happened. A total disaster.”
Asked what was going through his head, the Austrian GP victory was baffled as to how Mercedes miscalculated things with him in Q1, and again with Hamilton in Q2.
“I was confused. I didn’t understand.
“In terms of the operations, Lewis had made it through by like a hundreth of a second. He was in the pits when everyone was improving.”
Believing the team was over-optimising, Russell says a hard talk is needed inside Mercedes following a messy session concerning run plans — and he was visibly annoyed as Mercedes threw away a comfortable top 5 start on his side of the garage on the basis of practice.
“You can never take your eye off the ball, I think. We need to have a proper sit down as a team to understand what’s going on.
“We’ve got the car to be fighting for the top three. We shouldn’t be standing here out of Q1, Lewis only just made it through into Q3.
“I’m really quite angry right now because we’ve got such a fast car and we can’t be throwing away opportunities like this.”
Russell stormed through from 18th last year to finish P6. He’ll be hoping for something similar tomorrow, although he concedes it won’t be easy.
“[It will be a] difficult race. We’ll still be able to come through, maybe fight for the top six. But from P17, it’s not going to be easy.”
Toto Wolff was far from happy as well as he explained what happened from the team’s side.
“Losing a car in Q1 is just not on, driver-team combination, it shouldn’t happen.
“The other one, we put enough fuel to the end but it was a different run plan. It was a fast-slow-fast and he [Russell] decided to do three fast laps.
“But overall, it is 70% the team’s mistake on not fuelling one lap more.”
