George Russell said Mercedes made an error with their tactics after being eliminated in the first round of qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Mercedes sent both their drivers out for their final runs with only three minutes left at the end of Q1. Russell led team mate Lewis Hamilton out, but the pair swapped positions at the exit of turn three.While Hamilton went on to secure his place in Q2, Russell was passed by other cars as he waited to start his lap. That compromised his final run and he missed the cut to progress to the next round by less than two tenths of a second.
Russell made it clear he did not blame his rival drivers for overtaking him while he was waiting to start his lap. “In all honesty, I probably would have done the same if I was in their shoes,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “You’ve got to fight for yourself.
“But the track’s big enough, it’s 4.5 [kilometres] long, and we were in the space of 1km with 10 cars. So we just need to look in the mirror and recognise that we made a big cock-up today.”
Speaking before his team mate claimed pole position for the race, Russell said Mercedes took unnecessary risks during the session given how competitive their car was.
“The whole session we were on track at the wrong time, wrong point,” he said. “Taking way too much risk as a team. The car was so quick, we didn’t need to fuel for one lap and just go right at the end and in loads of traffic.
“But I was trying to respect the gentlemen’s agreement, got overtaken by a couple of cars most notably Pierre [Gasly], who overtook me at the last corner. I was three tenths down before I even started and the lap was gone.
“I’m not going to blame any of the drivers we’re all fighting for ourselves. As a team, we should have done a much better job.”
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stjs16 (@stjs16)
22nd July 2023, 17:10
Not just the team to blame George!
melanos
22nd July 2023, 23:01
Umm, from whom did GR learn to throw the team under the bus for his own mistakes?
Kb davies
23rd July 2023, 2:19
Maybe you can tell us??
Edvaldo
22nd July 2023, 17:22
Once everybody is hustling for track position, is everyone for himself and Russell was too passive there.
He chose to be the gentleman with people who would not do the same and paid the price.
Josh (@canadianjosh)
22nd July 2023, 17:25
I had the exact same problem this morning.
Frow67
22nd July 2023, 17:45
Never takes responsibility and now being shown up as inferior driver to LH … he just grates on me with his constant whinging
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
22nd July 2023, 17:49
Nah, LH is driving for himself this season, I believe. He was much too nice last season and Russell might have been given a thick head because of it. I have to agree though, Q1 shouldn’t be too much about risks at the end, they should have had a solid banker or given both of those guys two runs at the end to ensure a good lap time. Q1 is not the time to be trying to line up at the start finish with 30 seconds to go.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
22nd July 2023, 19:57
He’s right in saying that they shouldn’t have put themselves in that position, but ‘that position’ isn’t easy to model. No simulation will tell you how many cars will be backed up at the final turn. No computer or engineer can tell you what it’ll be, because it’s all up to the decisions of others.
They should’ve had a quicker time on the board if they were going to risk it, but the most damming thing is the cars that went past George. They went for it and he didn’t. You can’t complain about traffic when drivers are flying past you. By the time he put his foot down he was 3/4 of the way through the last corner, he probably crossed the line 20kph down on what he would’ve been doing without the hesitation.