George Russell apologized to his Mercedes team for the costly error that took him out of fourth place in the Canadian Grand Prix.
Mercedes had the ability to split strategies with its two drivers as the only one of the front-running teams with both cars in the top 10 in Montreal, and was running second and fourth with Lewis Hamilton and Russell respectively when the latter hit the wall at Turn 9. Russell admitted he had been caught out by how much the curb unsettled his car after a mistake, and that he cost the team significant points as a result.
“I don’t know if it was obvious from the TV; I just went a bit wide into Turn 8,” Russell said. “I knew I was going to hit the curb, but I wasn’t expecting the sausage curb to have such a violent response, and next thing I’m in the air, I landed and lost the rear, and I’m in the wall.
“It all happened really quite suddenly. Sorry to the team. For sure there was P3, P4 on the cards for us both, but positives to take away that the car was reasonably competitive.”
Russell was able to limp back to the pits and Mercedes checked the damage, replaced his front wing and sent him back out, much to the driver’s surprise.
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“Yeah, I did (think it was race over) to be honest. I was quite surprised that we managed to continue. I was very close to pulling up. I learned from the Silverstone experience (in 2022) not to stop too early. For sure, it’s a difficult pill to swallow. But that’s how the sport should be — one small mistake, you should be punished for it.
“It didn’t feel 100 percent perfect after that, but it was absolutely good enough to drive. I think the rear toe was a little bit out. We could have got home in P8. But we were in a lot of traffic, and the pre-race predictions, we weren’t obviously expecting to be in that position, hence why we got the brakes in the wrong place.”
The issue with the brakes eventually forced Russell to retire, and he believes it wasn’t an issue that Mercedes was likely to be able to have addressed during the race.
“I need to look into it with the team, but I’m pretty sure it was just because I was in so much traffic we weren’t planning to be, and the brakes weren’t in the right spot.
“It was all quite sudden when it was too late. I think the thing with brakes, once you go over a certain oscillation threshold, there’s no recovering. It does’t matter how much you nurse them. They’re just on a rate you can’t recover.”