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George Russell muscled his way through the field in Imola to score 4th in his Mercedes. The German team had suffered from its car being unable to generate sufficient temperature in its tires during Friday's qualifying and subsequently paid for it with a poor grid slot in the sprint race.
George Russell started the race in 11th position and climbed his way through the field to finish in 4th at the end of the race. After the race, Toto Wolff felt that what George was able to achieve was the maximum possible from the car.
"I mean, P4, with [Carlos] Sainz [out] and [Charles] Leclerc on the track in P6, that's probably as good as it gets. We had a design failure of our flap adjustment during the pitstop we couldn't put the wing in that was necessary for his second stint. [It was probably] a few tenths off the pace every single lap, managing understeer, and he did that brilliantly, so again, outperforming the car."
George Russell's teammate has a horrendous race
George Russell's teammate Lewis Hamilton, on the other hand, had a horrible race. While George Russell was able to jump to 6th at the start of the race, Lewis was stuck in the DRS training for the entire race and hence could not make
Speaking about Hamilton's race, Toto pointed out that his star driver getting stuck in the DRS train as the reason behind his poor result.
"You see that when there is a DRS train like we had in the Sprint race, none of them could overtake. It's really if you're being boxed in, in a train of cars, it's just almost impossible to overtake. I think Lewis had much more pace than [Pierre] Gasly or [Alex] Albon or all the other guys in front of him, but there's one DRS straight, and if you haven't got the straight-line speed, you can't pass."
"I think both drivers are doing the utmost and outperforming the car at the moment. We've seen that reaping the results for George, who did an outstanding race, a perfect start, and then handled a car that was that wasn't tuned optimally, and Lewis was just stuck there in the back."
George Russell is currently in an enviable position in the championship where he leads his established teammate Lewis Hamilton by 21 points. The young driver has beaten his teammate in 3 of the 4 races this season.
