Mercedes appeared to be quite optimistic about the upgrades they introduced at Austin after George Russell bagged a front row start in the sprint race. However, their performance took a turn for the worse as the weekend progressed.
Despite qualifying in P6 on Saturday, Russell’s heavy crash at the end of Q3 resulted in him starting from the pit lane at the United States Grand Prix since Mercedes breached Parc Fermé regulations to repair his heavily damaged W15. Nonetheless, he successfully recovered to sixth place after gaining fourteen positions throughout the race, including a late pass on Sergio Pérez.
Speaking afterwards, Russell was asked to comment on his previous statement that he had come to terms with the possibility of not competing in the race at all after the massive shunt in qualifying. In spite of feeling disappointed about letting the team down, he admitted there are no sentiments of resentment involved and that these incidents can happen when the car is not in the right operating window.
“Yeah, really tough. I mean, you feel as a driver, you know, letting the whole team down when your sort of actions have such an impact on so many people. But there’s never any hard feelings.
“We’re all pushing the limits as a team to improve this car and get some big results. And when we are in that window, we’re there. When we’re not, it bites and that happened to me yesterday; you saw it with Lewis [Hamilton] today. He never makes mistakes and the car just goes on us from nowhere.”
Since Russell reverted to the specification he had used in Singapore—without the Austin upgrades—due to the lack of spare parts, he was asked to shed some light on how tricky it was to go into the race with a version of the car he hadn’t driven yet during the weekend.
Despite not having clear expectations, the 26-year-old acknowledged that their pace looked promising and that he is optimistic about the potential of the upgrades. Stating that a better starting position might’ve allowed him to chase a podium finish, he remarked that the pace they showcased in the early laps of the sprint race was indicative of the underlying strong pace they showed glimpses of throughout the race weekend.
“Yeah, I had no idea what to expect going into today, but clearly the pace was pretty good.
“I’m still confident that the upgrades were working as expected. And I really think we could have been fighting for probably a podium if we’d have been in a normal starting position.
“So I think in the sprint race, I just destroyed my tyres. But clearly in those early laps yesterday, we had the pace and we’ve shown glimmers of really strong pace this weekend. So let’s see what the next races bring.”
Specifying that he encountered no issues with the Singapore specification, a journalist wanted Russell to elaborate on whether the new upgrades had potentially led to his crash in qualifying and Lewis Hamilton’s on the third lap of the race. The young Brit dismissed the hypothesis and commented that the team had modified the set-up overnight before his car hit the track on Sunday.
“No, I don’t think [so]. I managed to change the set-up a bit because of the parc fermé start. Nothing really to do with the upgrades.
“I don’t think it’s…Yeah, it’s pretty complicated to understand.”
Referring to the 5-second penalty he was given early on for forcing Sauber driver Valtteri Bottas off-track at turn 12, Russell was asked to share his opinion on the multiple penalties that were handed out during the race. The two-time race winner was rather understanding of the difficult task the stewards have to perform given the vast purview of the current sporting regulations.
In terms of the written directives, Russell admitted that his penalty was justified. At the same time, he remarked that the decision was not accurate from a practical point of view and that it would be preferable if the FIA appointed the same stewards at every race during a season for the sake of deliberation and consistency.
“I think the stewards have a really difficult job because the regulation is so large.
“When you watch an incident in slow motion or you pause it at a given point. My penalty with Valtteri [Bottas], the rule states if you’re not ahead of the apex and you push someone wide, you get a penalty. So by the letter of the law, my penalty was correct.
“But anybody who knows racing and anybody watching it knows it was not correct. So I don’t really know how we move forward.
“I think we’d probably all want to see probably the same stewards all year long. So that the drivers and the stewards can all be on the same page. That we can apply common sense when needed rather than having to really follow the letter of the law.”
