George Russell came fifth at the United States Grand Prix Sprint race, one position ahead of his fellow Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell said they had no idea what was going on after they had issues during the Austin Sprint race.
Russell began Saturday’s Sprint second on the grid and wanted to challenge for the win against pole-sitter Max Verstappen. But(at) the second corner Lando Norris had outbraked him and he was off to places only fifth by the time the chequered flag was down.
That was only one place higher than Mercedes team-mate Hamilton, who did climb a place from his starting position. Both lacked pace, though they suffered different issues with Russell losing grip in his front tyres while the seven-time F1 champion was struggling with the rears.
Other than the weather – it was noticeably hotter in Texas on Saturday than it had been the previous day – neither of them could put their fingers on what had happened. Hamilton said: “I would not say it is a surprise – we have had that problem many a time. The car was feeling good yesterday and we were both on for the first and second row – George was so close to pole.
Definitely a confusing result in that he had one problem and I had another problem. I had zero pace… We will look into it and there are changes we can make, but it is a lot hotter than it was yesterday so that is obviously part of the reason.”
And Russell added: I was fast in the start of it then had no tyreshini left. So, I felt like if I backed up a little bit, then the Ferraris were going to be on my tail and the Ferraris were right behind me and they were not exactly relaxing.
I later asked Lewis about it after the race and he said he had no rear tyres left and definitely, we are lacking something there. It is a little bit hotter today and the first time ever we have run on these medium tyres. In practice the hard tyre felt great and we had really great race pace.
We could have gone harder at it, but as I said on the media it was different. It was rather disappointing to finish as the P5, though it was just a Sprint race and it was like a practice session before the actual event this coming tomorrow where we get another try.”
Up front, Verstappen was much more pleased with the feel of the updated Red Bull having led the Sprint from start to finish. He said: Well, it kind of remind me of the early days! I am very happy with today.
When you look at the whole race, Ferrari was also very fast but for us, we were into racing again. This I assume is a racer’s paradise normally in the race we are always looking back behind us, but now we could just do our own race and we had good pace.