George Russell finished fifth in today’s Italian Grand Prix, a welcome result after a few lacklustre performances in recent races. And it was quite an eventful one. He started from fourth place on the grid and managed to stay there after the start, but eventually Pérez put the pressure on Russell, eventually passing the young Briton. Although it did take quite some effort, to Russell’s surprise.
“I was surprised how long it took Checo to pass with the superior pace of that car, they were so fast in the high speed corners. We saw it yesterday, probably a factor into their better tyre degradation than the rest of us.
“But I was pretty pleased to hold him off for that long, I felt good and confident in the braking into turn one. So yeah, Singapore should hopefully be a different story.”
And although the Mercedes driver rather is on the attacking side, he did enjoy the fight he had with the Red Bull.
“Every fight is enjoyable, but it’s definitely more enjoyable when you’re the attacking car in a faster car than the defending car in a slower car.
“You know that you’ve got to really nail your braking, nail every corner, because if you don’t they’ll just sweep past you,” Russell explained. “There’s something satisfying about it when you do manage to hold a car off like that for so long.
“I’ll take a small positive in that there were no mistakes from my side in those laps. But unfortunately the pace just wasn’t there today.”
It was in that fight that he had his first encounter with the runoff in the Rettifilo chicane, as both he and Checo resorted to corner cutting after outbraking themselves. He “went in pretty hot”, to his own account, but the stewards didn’t feel the need to interfere in this case.
That was different for his duel with Esteban Ocon just after his pitstop, where an optimistic braking manoeuvre saw him going straight on from the pit exit, leaving the Frenchman no other option than to join Russell in the detour. The stewards deemed him the culprit, penalising him with a five second penalty.
“Yeah I knew there had to be a maximised outlap, I came out the pits right behind, or next to Ocon, and I knew if I fell behind him my chance to undercut the guy ahead would disappear.
“So I went in very hot into turn one, knowing there was a bit of a risk to miss the corner and that’s what happened. In Monza it’s a bit of a shame because it’s always a bit of a get out of jail free card with the run off there, and that gives drivers, especially when you’re fighting, the chance to miss the corner.”
He added that he’d “probably like to see a bit of a change in that corner in the future,” as it is too encouraging to cut it.
But despite the five second penalty Russell would have taken the same risk in hindsight.
“Yeah absolutely, I knew that P5 was probably the worst that we could have achieved considering the gap to the guy in P6, so it would have only compromised me if there was a safety car right at the end.”
