George Russell believes he was on course to take his first World Championship points in Formula 1 at the Tuscan Grand Prix before losing positions at the final race restart.
Following an opening lap crash at Mugello involving several drivers, Russell was promoted to 11th place in the running order.
When a second standing start was called following a red flag period for another incident at a Safety Car restart, Russell progressed into 10th which then became 9th after Lance Stroll crashed out.
However, on the final restart, which came about after Stroll’s crash, Russell dropped down to last place after enduring wheel spin, costing him a chance of a top ten finish.
Although he moved up one spot before taking the chequered flag, his recovery effort was not enough to overtake Sebastian Vettel and secure a single Championship point.
“The pace was good, I was fully maintaining the position,” Russell said of his race. “We had P9 sort of in the bag there to bring home.
“The tyres were great and then just lost all my positions off the line with that second restart with a poor launch. Everything seemed to be on target with procedure.
“I just went straight into wheel spin which was a bit odd and got hit by Kimi. You can’t do anything from there. I was driving my heart out.”
Russell added that the collision that occurred between multiple cars along the start-finish straight at the Safety Car restart was “inevitable” due to how the drivers were managing the pace.
“It was kind of inevitable when they were accelerating and decelerating and there’s just a concertina effect,” he said.
“This has happened a number of times before in junior formulae, it will always continue to happen when you have 20-odd cars in the race that are accelerating and decelerating very quickly.
“[It’s] not ideal, I don’t know if anyone got a penalty for that, but it caused a lot of damage for a lot of people.”
