Shortly after Q3 was stopped by an accident involving Lewis Hamilton, the red flag had to appear again, this time due to an incident involving George Russell.
The companion of the seven-time world champion lost control of the Mercedes W13 in the last corner and hit the rear of his car in the protection of the Red Bull Ring. Despite this, thanks to the time he had registered moments before, he finished the classification with fifth place.
Asked if it was a ‘lucky accident’, Russell said: “I wouldn’t call it that. You have to look at the damage to the car first. When you make a mistake like that, you can’t say it was luck on any of the the aspects”.
The Brit explained that he tried to push the limits at the end of his lap, because he believed he could achieve a great result: “It would have been fourth at least. I was improving a tenth and I went for it, thinking that third place was possible. But, Obviously, that wasn’t the case.”
“Now we have to look at the damage on the car. I feel very sorry for the team and for the guys in the garage. I’m fine physically, but I’m a little worried about the car, if it’s fixable.”
Despite the accidents, the sensations were promising for Mercedes. “There are positive signs,” Russell said. “We have fitted some new things to our car and we know that Ferrari and Red Bull were probably pushing the limits of the regulation more than we were with the ground in terms of what was supposed to be done by interpretation of the rules.
“All these things seem to be turning in our favour, but we don’t want to get too excited just yet. Lewis was very good too, he was flying around the track. I may have got the setup wrong for qualifying, but it’s still the right one for the race”.
Looking ahead to the two races still to go, Russell was positive: “Our race pace is usually better than qualifying. And we’re definitely in the mix here.”
“We’ve probably had our best qualifying of the year as a team in terms of the pace we’ve shown, but it’s probably been our worst qualifying in terms of results. Well, that’s racing, but we’ve got Saturday’s race to make up for it.” young Mercedes driver.
