George Russell has denied that his sub-par start to the Austrian Grand Prix on Saturday cost him a point-scoring position at the end of the race.
Starting from eighth on the Medium tyres, Russell fell back to 12th on the opening lap.
In the final stages of the race, Russell found himself in 10th, having moved ahead of Yuki Tsunoda, Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, and was on the verge of scoring his first championship points as a Williams driver.
However, with three laps remaining, he was overtaken by two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, which forced him into 11th place and out of the points.
“[I] made a good start but unfortunately Tsunoda sort of jolted in front of me, I think he had a big lock up,” Russell said.
“I had to avoid an incident which really compromised me, made me lose two or three positions. Nevertheless that didn’t change the race result.
“I did a good strategy, drove my heart out. If you could choose to have any guy behind you in that situation, you wouldn’t choose Fernando.
“He had the pace of the top five [on Saturday], so keeping a guy like Fernando behind, who had the pace of the top five, was nigh on impossible. I definitely gave it a shot, so close but yet so far.”
Despite missing out on points, Russell says there are positives that he can take from the weekend, including having reached Q3 on Saturday for the first time with Williams.
“I guess so, positives, Q3, P11, so close to the top ten,” Russell stated. “Personally that’s probably one of my first real battles on track.
“I felt like I held my own and didn’t make any silly mistakes. I’ve been here three years now but one of those years I was driving around completely on my own. Last year was a little bit of the same. That was pretty nice, a battle like that, with a guy like Fernando.”
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