After lining up in fifth on the grid and losing a place off the line, George Russell’s hopes of scoring a podium were understandably low. However, the W15’s excellent pace on the hard compound tyres allowed him to retake the position from Max Verstappen. As an unexpected bonus, the shocking collision between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez on the penultimate lap promoted him to third at the chequered flag.
Speaking afterwards, Russell confessed that he was quite surprised to finish the race in third place. Despite the power unit change and the drop off in pace after his poor start, the Brit stated that their superb pace on the hard tyres enabled him to close in on the battle ahead of him and capitalise on the Sainz/Perez incident after he managed to overtake the Dutchman on track.
“Yeah, definitely surprised. Glad to see Carlos and Checo are okay, but I think there was so much hard work this weekend for everybody in the team. There was engine change on my side, engine change for Lewis, so much going on. Everybody was working so hard.
“And we had a really bad start to the race. I was dropping off a lot. But on the hard tyre, I think we were one of the quickest out there. And that was great. Got past Max. So an added bonus to stand on the podium.”
With regard to what his expectations were going into the race, Russell answered that they were merely hoping to finish where they started. He elaborated on his statement, saying that their pace on the mediums was abysmal in comparison to Leclerc’s, who was leading the race at the time.
However, their pace drastically improved when they switched to the hard tyres, and Russell admitted that they need to further analyse what contributed to the massive discrepancy in performance between the two compounds.
“Yeah, we thought we could probably fight for P5. But how the race unfolded, we definitely didn’t expect. We were really slow in the first stint. I was about one and a half seconds slower than Charles most laps. And it all felt pretty disastrous. But then the last 20 laps of the race, we were a second lap quicker than Piastri and Charles and three or four tenths quicker than Max and Carlos and Checo.
“So, you know, I’m sort of a bit frazzled as to why that is. The only difference is going from a yellow tyre to a white tyre. And, yeah, we need to understand why, understand further.”
In fact, the British driver had some strong words to share regarding the inconsistency of the Pirelli tyres from session to session. Calling it black magic, he claimed that even the tyre manufacturers are clueless about how they function. A frustrated Russell declared that the only factor that made the W15 perform like a backmarker and a race-winning car during different stages of the same race was the Pirelli rubber.
“Honestly it’s actually pretty infuriating that it changes this much and it’s not just Mercedes, it’s every team and every driver. One session you’re fast, the next you’re not and it’s only one thing that changes.
“It is a black magic. I think even the people who make the tires don’t understand the tires but I think we all need probably serious conversations again about what’s going on because you know we’ve got 2,000 people working their butts off to deliver the fastest car and 20 laps of the race we had a car that was comfortable of fighting for victory. The 20 other laps we had a car that probably shouldn’t have been in the points and the only difference is the tires and it’s not good enough really.”
When asked to comment on his most difficult moment in the race, Russell referred to the massive crash on lap 50 and stated that the setting sun compromised his vision as he attempted to avoid the stationary cars and carbon fibre debris while driving at full speed.
Furthermore, declaring that the delay in the announcement of a Safety Car or VSC was egregious, the GPDA director admitted that he was relieved to see everyone walk away unscathed.
“Driving full gas into a wall of carbon fibre on the penultimate lap. I mean, that was pretty crazy. The sun was coming down. You couldn’t see anything. I was shocked the Safety Car or VSC didn’t come out sooner. You know, the car could have been anywhere. So, as I said, glad to see everybody was okay. It was a long old race and glad to be on the podium.”
In terms of the competitiveness that the top four teams are displaying recently and whether Mercedes can be in the mix for podiums in the upcoming races, Russell responded that they have to temper their expectations.
Stating that they would’ve realistically finished in fifth place without the unfortunate incident, the 26-year-old acknowledged that they have a lot of ground to cover before they can challenge the teams ahead of them on a consistent basis. Nonetheless, he appeared cautiously optimistic about their performance in Singapore.
“I mean, we’ve got to be realistic still. We should have finished fifth today. That was the true result. Obviously, with Lando’s qualifying yesterday, he probably would have been up there as well. So I don’t want to get carried away with ourselves with this podium today. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Hopefully, Singapore is a slightly better weekend.”
