Mercedes’ George Russell was off to a good start during the Brazil GP when he took the lead from McLaren’s Lando Norris into the first corner. Russell maintained the lead, in tricky conditions, closely followed by Norris until he was called to the pits on lap 29 of the GP. The McLaren driver followed Russell to the pits which had both of them losing track position to Esteban Ocon, Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly, who crucially had decided to stay out.
Unfortunately, for Russell, the timing of the pit stop proofed to be detrimental for his podium shot as only two laps later the Safety Car was deployed ahead of the race being red flagged on lap 33 following the crash of Williams’ Franco Colapinto.
The red flag gave a free pit stop to the three drivers who had yet to pit: Verstappen, Ocon, and Gasly. Later, they would stand on the podium. Russell went on to finish just outside the podium in P4.
“Very painful, all things considered, not much I want to say, really,” Russell stated when asked about the potentially missed podium.
“Yeah, I mean, it was ‘box’. I said ‘stay out’. It was ‘box’ again, it was ‘stay out’, I said. And they said ‘box’ again, and I said, ‘I want to stay out’. Last one, you’ve got to go for it.
“Sometimes you have to trust your gut. Last time I trusted my gut, it went down pretty well.
“Today, who knows if we could have won the race? But if we didn’t pit, we would have been leading at the restart.
“And the first 30 laps, controlling the pace with Lando behind us, we had very good straight line speed as well. P2 would have been the minimum.”
Under these conditions, the drivers have an advantage over their teams as they are able to judge track conditions and anticipate the potential for a Safety Car or even a red flag. Russell states that it was “very clear” that there was the potential for either.
It left the Mercedes driver down in P5 as Norris passed him before the Safety Car and ultimately red flag got deployed.
He would pass Norris and Leclerc after the restart to eventually wind up in 4th, less than a second behind Gasly at the line.
“From a team’s perspective, it’s not obvious at all,” he explained.
“From the cockpit, it was very clear it was going to be a red flag or safety car, because the conditions were undriveable. The rain was not easing. I could see the big black cloud above me.
“And then I had Shov [Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineering director] jump on as, like, overruling my engineer to say ‘box’.”
“We’re working as a team, we’re trying to make the best decisions in the time.
“Clearly the guys who didn’t pit, they finished 1-2-3 and we finished the highest of the drivers who did. So, I would take a small slice of satisfaction from that.”
