Poor Qualifying Costs Russell in F1 Race

Russell’s poor qualifying hampers his race, leaving him in eighth despite little hope for better performance.

Starting from 17th after a failed qualifying, George Russell hoped to climb to seventh place. This scenario did not account for the Mercedes F1 driver encountering a very solid Sergio Pérez, ultimately finishing in eighth position.

“We were hoping for seventh place, to be honest. Checo had a superb race. On paper, we could have been 50 or 60 seconds behind the leader at the finish, and we ended up 40 seconds behind. We take the positives, and it’s great that Lewis made it onto the podium, and congratulations to Oscar on his first victory,” Russell stated, admitting that his qualifying had spoiled his weekend.

“One could say that of the last five weekends, this has been our least competitive. But Lewis is on the podium, which is a good result for the team. Under normal circumstances, I would have been in that group fighting for third or fifth place. But such is sport; you make a mistake, and you are punished.”

“We struggle a bit more in these very hot conditions, so we haven’t really managed to reach the very good pace of our competitors. Nevertheless, securing eighth place and the fastest lap in the race represents a solid recovery.”

However, Russell remains optimistic and hopes that Mercedes can continue to achieve good results in the upcoming races: “Lewis had a great race today and showed what the car is capable of.”

“It’s very close to the front of the grid, which now involves several teams. We know we need to maximise every opportunity we have and execute clean weekends to score good points. We will aim to do this starting next week at Spa.”