On Saturday, problems with the car prevented George Russell from qualifying normally for the sprint, but during the short race, which took place on a drying track, good tactics allowed him to bounce back and eventually take a bonus point. Lewis Hamilton, his Mercedes team-mate, did not score any points, but at least he enjoyed the fight.
George Russell (8th): “It is clear to me that it is time to switch to slicks – even a lap before I told the team that if this was a qualifying I would now put slicks. The problem was that there were only 13 laps to go before the finish and it was not clear if I would have time to regain the positions lost by the pit stop.
In general, I am glad I made such a decision, although it is always difficult in such situations: if you drive close behind another car, a trail of splashing water is still created. Even when the track is semi-dry, the splashing water continues to fly around.
But after a failed qualifying you pray that the weather conditions will be just like that. Although if I started with the top five I would probably have a different opinion.
I find the sprint race interesting, although it seems to me that it is too short. If it had been normal again it would have been boring for sure. A “DRS train” would form and nothing could be done about it.
In general, the most difficult moment was leaving the pit lane on slicks, as this track was drying out and the pit lane was still the wettest part of the circuit. But then it was quite easy to overtake on slicks, because I was about five seconds faster than those who stayed on the intermediate rubber.
Lewis Hamilton (10th): “Overall the race gave me fun. This morning I was capable of quite a bit of speed. Potentially I should have easily made it into the top five and in the race I could be close to the podium judging by the pace our car was capable of. But it turned out differently.
Overall I just tried to enjoy the race. Yes, I lost some points today, but this is not yet the most important day of the weekend. But we have received a lot of valuable information and we hope that it will be useful to us tomorrow.
A Ferrari and one of the Red Bull cars start ahead of me, and this team is in a league of its own. But if I can stay behind the Scuderia drivers, it will be great.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
