George Russell accepted both penalties he picked up during Saturday’s action at the Circuit of the Americas, one of which cost him a place in the sprint race.
The Mercedes driver was given a three-place grid drop for impeding Charles Leclerc during the qualifying session for the sprint race. That dropped him to 11th on the grid.From there he rose to take the chequered flag in seventh. But he collected a five-second time penalty for overtaking Oscar Piastri with all four wheels off the track, which dropped Russell to eighth place behind Pierre Gasly, and cost him a point.
The stewards ruled Russell “went off track and completed the overtaking off track,” when he went by Piastri. “At no time while still being on track was car 63 [Russell] in front of car 81 [Piastri] and therefore did not have the right to the line, but gained a lasting advantage by completing the overtaking off track.”
Russell did not take issue with either penalty. “Definitely a scrappy day,” he told media including RaceFans after the race. “In the stewards twice, both were fair penalties, neither were intentional.”
He said his move on Piastri had been “optimistic” given the circumstances. “He had his right to push me off and I went for it, just thinking if he was being kind I would have got the position.”
After making the move, Russell closed on Carlos Sainz Jnr and briefly got ahead of the Ferrari driver, only to lose the place and finish behind his rival. “It was a shame I couldn’t get past Carlos, he was just too quick in the corners that matter compared to us,” said Russell.
Following a series of strong performance in qualifying, Russell admitted he was surprised by his downturn at the Circuit of the Americas.
“We knew in qualifying if we did everything right, P6 was probably the maximum. It’s just been a bit of a strange weekend I was really off the pace in Q1 and Q2 and then Q3 things came back to me.
“It’s swings and roundabouts. Qualifying is definitely one of my strengths recently, something to review why it hasn’t been so good this weekend. But, it’s one weekend you can’t get it right every time.”
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