George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli voice frustration after a chaotic Monaco Grand Prix, questioning strategy, format, and F1 race dynamics.
George Russell finished just outside the points at the Monaco Grand Prix after a two-stop race where he was first held up by Liam Lawson, and then twice by the Williams cars. It was a frustrating experience for the Mercedes F1 driver, who clearly did not appreciate the artificial new rule, as he explained with irony.
“I have a really good idea. Each driver has a button, and it allows them to trigger a sprinkler system, and we can decide whether to use it in qualifying or the race, but it can only be used once throughout the weekend. And every driver has it! Or maybe just one driver from each team! The sprinklers turn on, it spices things up, it’s the ONLY solution!” joked the Briton.
Clearly agitated and full of suggestions, Russell also imagined focusing the weekend on qualifying: “We can talk about it, but otherwise, let’s do two qualifying sessions and award points for qualifying.”
“There would be one qualifying session on Saturday and that would count as a win, and a qualifying race on Sunday and that would be another win. I don’t know, because the race was kind of silly. Unless there’s a lot of rain, like in some races last year… but it’s Monaco, there’s no other race like this one.”
In any case, he doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Monaco or of the glamour that, according to him, gets in the way of F1’s passion: “Probably 95% of the people who come here don’t come to watch the race, maybe even more, so it’s not really a race.”
It is worth noting that the race stewards did take into account Russell’s frustrated radio message, after he deliberately overtook Alex Albon off-track, and handed him a drive-through penalty.
The FIA confirmed that deliberate action was not tolerable, and it was clear that the move deserved more than a five-second penalty, even if the games of slowing down frustrated many drivers today.
A “relaxed” but “frustrating” race for Antonelli
Andrea Kimi Antonelli followed the same strategy as his teammate and also had to slow down to help Russell keep 11th place, which forced him to finish three laps down on the winner: “It was quite a relaxed race, the first lap had some action but we were trying to stay out long.”
“That was the plan but Williams were playing the same game. I did what the team asked me to do, we tried to get at least one car into the points but it didn’t work. There was nothing more we could have done here.”
“I was able to push in the last five laps and that was fun. But we expected this, when you start so far back in Monaco you know it’s going to be hard to gain positions. But I don’t think I should have been in that position, the mistake yesterday was costly and I’ll make sure not to repeat it.”
“It was a tough weekend, there’s a lot to learn. I learned a lot about setup and the feedback to give the team, because we went in one direction then reversed course and that was a good learning process for me. I had to manage the frustration during the race but I learned a lot.”
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