George Russell: Stroll’s actions raise questions

George Russell finished 8th in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix behind Lance Stroll who finished 7th. But at an earlier stage of the race, he managed to get ahead of the Aston Martin driver, and not on the track, but already at the entrance to the pit lane. Since this was a somewhat unusual maneuver, the stewards drew attention to it, but left it without consequence.

But such actions by the Mercedes driver were caused by the fact that Stroll drove too slowly through the pit lane, since at that time the car of his partner, Fernando Alonso, was being serviced in the Aston Martin pits. According to the Mercedes driver, this tactic raises questions.

Russell and Stroll swerved into the pit lane one after the other as a spate of pit stops began, due to the arrival of the safety car on track. Aston Martin decided to make a double pit stop and as Alonso was ahead of his partner he reached the pits first. It appears that Stroll slowed down more than usual when entering the pit lane, giving the team time to get the Spaniard’s car out on track.

Russell chose not to waste time actually overtaking Stroll in the pit lane, and after the finish he was asked if such actions were somewhat of an emotional response to the Aston Martin driver’s actions.

“It played into my hands. I managed to get ahead of him on the way to the pit lane. I think what Stroll did is against the rules,” said George RacingNews365. – Absolutely, his actions raise questions, but I was happy that I was ahead of him. And then our guys had a good pit stop.”

However, he failed to get ahead of the Canadian, he was able to recover on the restart of the race, which of course did not help Russell’s mood.

“It’s a pity that I missed everything on the restart,” he worried. – In terms of speed we were very close to Aston Martin, but even a very small difference can seriously affect the results – we saw this both in Saturday’s sprint and in Melbourne. Yet we’re still behind.”