George Russell says a “massive miscommunication” was to blame for his collision with Lewis Hamilton on the pit straight during qualifying at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Hamilton was on the racing line starting a timed lap when Russell pulled to the right to pick up the slipstream from Carlos Sainz on the run to Turn 1, but Russell then moved back across to the racing line to pass the Ferrari. With Hamilton already alongside, the pair touched and Hamilton lost part of his front wing. Russell says he was unaware his teammate had approached so quickly.
“Just a massive miscommunication,” Russell said. “I was looking ahead trying to get the slipstream from Carlos, and next thing Lewis was there. So, we need to talk internally how that happened because two teammates, that should never happen. It wasn’t either one’s fault; Lewis probably just didn’t know I was starting a lap too.”
Hamilton and Russell get too close for comfort in qualifying 👀#SpanishGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/iNN0795E9p
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 3, 2023
Russell had needed to back off and start a lap again at that point and ended up dropping out of qualifying in 12th place, saying he was really struggling to get the Mercedes working on a low temperature and greasy track surface.
“Well, the car wasn’t feeling OK every single lap of the session — we made some small changes from FP3 to qualifying; the car was bouncing a lot in the high-speed corners. The corners that were easy flat during practice, I couldn’t take flat, couldn’t get the tires working.
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“It kind of all went wrong — from the first lap in Q1 I knew we weren’t going to be having a good day. It was strange, we should be capitalizing from conditions like that, and we usually do, as a team we’re usually good when it’s challenging, but today, on my side, it wasn’t there.
“I think it was pretty telling the first lap in Q1, (Nico) Hulkenberg P1, 1.5s quicker than what we could achieve. I was trying all sorts with the out-lap, all sorts with pressures, probably just got ourselves a bit lost and confused.
“The second change we made into quali definitely was directionally wrong for those cold, damp, greasy conditions. Which is a shame, especially as I think we have a fast race car. In FP2 we probably had the second-quickest car after Max (Verstappen) ahead of the Ferraris.”
Despite the frustrating day, Russell believes he can make progress in the race as the Mercedes showed encouraging race pace on Friday.
“Not all is lost, just need to be patient tomorrow and try and come back through,” he mused. “Yeah, definitely more hopeful, unless we have any incidents we should move forwards; but as I said, just a bit disappointed we are where we are.”