George Russell has revealed some shocking statements about his second season in the Silverstone-based outfit after the advent of Japanese GP. The race wasn’t a huge success for the team and George Russell was already recovering from the aftermath of his Singapore crash.
Russell was backed by Mercedes strategists, who gave him full support in the race, moving it for overtakes and defensive measures as he tried to hold his ground in the mediocre-performing Mercedes W14. She resonated with Russell’s claims about his driving and performances in the current season.
Mercedes’ Rosie Wait weighs in on Suzuka strategy
Lewis Hamilton had openely criticized the team’s decision to help Russell with DRS against Sainz. He implied that the strategy didn’t work properly at the same time, affecting his long-term racing.
But Rosie Wait had other plans in his mind regarding George Russell’s one-stop race strategy and all the calls made throughout the race for him.
“Our focus strategically in that race was, how do we regain some track position? We knew the one-stop was unlikely to be faster than the two-stop but George had very little to lose. We were already behind everyone and so it was likely we could take a risk without any big downsides.”
She emphasized the fact that they had fallen behind their main competitors on one of the hardest tracks of the current F1 calendar.
George Russell declares 2023 as his best season
Russell has made some bold claims about his current performance and his race craft this season in his second year at the Silverstone outfit.
“In terms of pure performance, I feel that this season has been my best ever,” Russell mentioned in front of the media.
“But I reckon there’s over 60 points that we’ve lost this season for a number of different reasons. Australia we had a shot at a podium at the minimum and lost 18 points there [with the engine failure]. We had Zandvoort with the rain, there was another podium that was gone.”
“The podium [in Singapore] was obviously driver error. We had in Canada, again, another mistake from my side, another 10 points lost there. Monaco, a few points lost as well. And there’s been many, many races where, where we’ve lost points when I put in contrast to last year, I think we were in the top five at 19 of 22 races and we just kept on collecting those points.”
George Russell is pretty confident about his racing and he believes that he can easily counter his mistakes now that he is a more proficient driver. What do you think about Russell’s performance and do you think it is his best yet?
