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George Russell had a rather average outing in the Imola sprint race. The Mercedes driver started the race in 11th but a poor start dropped him down the order. He then crawled his way through the field but the progress was tough to make as he got stuck in the DRS train with the other drivers.
Russell would eventually stick an overtake on Sebastian Vettel late into the Sprint to secure a P11 starting position for the main race. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, fared even worse as he was only able to secure 14th position.
Speaking to the media after the race, Russell said:
“Yeah it was definitely challenging, I think we had a relatively good pace but we were stuck in a DRS train and we didn’t have the ststraight linepeed to attack into Turn 2 so that made things doubly difficult but, I expect tomorrow there will be more opportunity but we need to do something different to our rivals to be able to move forward as it was clear today that it wasn’t easy to overtake.”
Russell was subsequently questioned on what his relative experience was out on track, and if the time spent on the track was helpful for the team in gaining a better understanding for the weekend. The Briton said that the learnings and improvements are not going to be for this weekend as parc fermé regs are already in place but maybe some global improvements might be there. He said:
“I think it was good, we got a lot of laps on the board and probably global learning that will help on the whole but nothing to take away this weekend. We just need to make the most of it tomorrow. P11, more opportunities tomorrow to try and move up the grid.”
George Russell is sneakily outperforming his seven-time champion teammate
George Russell put together an impressive race at Imola for Mercedes and finished 4th. Lewis Hamilton, in the same car, could only muster 14th in the race. In what was a race of contrasting fortunes, Hamilton was stuck in a DRS train throughout the race while Russell got an impressive getaway and passed Kevin Magnussen during the start.
After Imola's results, Russell leads Hamilton by 21 points in the championship standings as the young British driver is slowly but steadily establishing himself within the team.
