Despite the very English weather, the British were drowned in the rain in São Paulo on Sunday during the Brazilian Grand Prix. Like Lando Norris, George Russell missed a great chance to win at Interlagos, due to bad timing and a missed gamble with his pit stop. On lap 29, as the rain intensified and flooded the track, the team Mercedes wanted to take advantage of a Virtual Safety Car to change the tires of the n°63. Unfortunately, the VSC disappeared just as the King's Lynn native was entering the pit lane!
George Russell's bad luck did not end there, as three laps later the red flag was displayed following Franco Colapinto's accident, a stroke of luck for Max Verstappen and the two pilots Alpine who had remained on the track and were able to calmly change their tires during the interruption of the race. When the red flag was raised, the Englishman became furious with his team, aware that the race had just slipped away from him: “Fuck! I told you so, damn! We should have stayed on track!”
"Everything was under control", regrets Russell
Having restarted in 5th place after the red flag, George Russell then gained a position after Lando Norris' mistake at the restart. The Mercedes driver then remained stuck behind Pierre Gasly and had to settle for 4th place, while he led the race in the first 30 laps. A huge disappointment for the Briton who confided at the finish of the race that he should have “follow your instinct, like at Spa” where he won with a one-stop strategy, before being disqualified.
"My opinion is that if we had stayed on track, we would have been first at the restart ahead of [Esteban] Or with, Max [Verstappen] and [Pierre] Gasly. Leading at the front is much easier. I don't know where we could have finished, but I was quite angry at that moment because I wanted to stay on track.", says George Russell, annoyed.
The two-time Grand Prix winner believes he was "comfortable" enough before his stop to stay on track. “In the first 30 laps, everything was under control. We were 12 seconds ahead of third, managing my gap to Lando [Norris]. Obviously, those three laps were very, very difficult at the halfway point, and that’s why I wanted to stay [on track] because I felt very, very confident that there would be a safety car or a red flag. Inevitably, that’s what happened because it was undriveable.”, George Russell points out. Bad times for the British in Brazil.
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Yves-Henri RANDIER
04/11/2024 at 12:13 a.m.
With ifs... that being said, he was never able to overtake Gasly! Given the usual weather conditions in treacherous Albion, we can't say that all the British drivers (Russell, Norris, Hamilton, Bearman and even Albon) were particularly brilliant at Interlagos, hence the hasty departure of the English journalists to Guarulhos international airport which is almost 2 hours by car to the north-east of the city!