George Russell was left fuming after his race engineer told him to abandon a lap time which would have left him quickest in Q3.
The Mercedes driver was unimpressed when team principal Toto Wolff tried to console him on his radio by pointing out he was second-fastest. “P2, I don’t want to be P2,” Russell responded. “I want to be P1.”Russell’s race engineer Marcus Dudley told him to back off as he neared the end of a quick lap in Q3 as rain began to fall. The team hoped to put Russell in position to set a faster time on his next lap before the rain intensified.
Russell challenged Dudley’s response, asking “are you sure?” He duly backed off but the rain volume increased more rapidly than the team expected and Russell’s subsequent lap was slower.
“It’s heavier now,” Dudley told him. “So it’s raining heavily now in the pit lane.”
“Mate, I should have fucking finished the lap,” Russell told him. “Mate you fucking told me to back off! What the hell?”
Having qualified second, Russell will start seventh due to his five-place grid penalty for an engine change. He said after the session his result “sums up everything this season.”
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“I’ve calmed down a little bit,” Russell told Sky after qualifying. He said he’d felt more confident in the car in the wet session.
“I felt really great out there. I had more confidence in the wet than I had in the dry, which is quite unusual, and it just sort of highlights the challenge I’ve been having with this car.
“I just felt more like myself again out there and the confidence, you needed so much commitment out there. In my first laps I was aquaplaning in fifth gear over 130 miles an hour, you can’t actually see the road in front of you.
“It’s quite difficult to describe how that feels like. You’re on no visual cue, it’s grey, it is mist everywhere, you have a spray, and then you’re aquaplaning, wheel spinning at fifth gear at well over 100 miles an hour, it’s tough.
“But anyway, grid penalty tomorrow, could have been P6 on the grid, now we’re P7.”
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