George Russell was a surprise Formula 1 winner at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, but the Mercedes driver felt as if his Austrian Grand Prix victory made up for a missed opportunity in Canada earlier in the season.
A much improved Mercedes W15 arrived at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve earlier this month which Russell guided to pole position.
But the Briton squandered his opportunity in the Canadian GP with a few errors costing him the victory when arguably, he had the fastest car.
Fast forward to Sunday and Mercedes had the third fastest car, but Russell was the beneficiary when Lando Norris and Max Verstappen came to blows in a tense fight.
“It feels really great, to be honest,” Russell said post-race after second Formula 1 GP victory.
“These last three races as a team, we’ve really turned it up.
“I feel that Montreal was probably a victory that we missed out on, and we ended up finishing P3.
“Today was a deserving P3, and we got the victory.
“So it’s funny how this sport turns around, and just credit to all the team for the hard work they’ve done such huge progress since the start of the year.”
Russell inherited the race lead when Verstappen and Norris hit one another at Turn 3 on Lap 64 of 71, when he’d been trailing by approximately 15 seconds.
Suddenly he was in the lead with a handful of laps to go and a quick McLaren in the hands of Oscar Piastri only a few seconds back.
Cue a tense end to the race.
“I thought [Piastri] was going to catch [me], to be honest, but I think catching is one thing, overtaking is another,” said Russell.
“So I had Carlos [Sainz] behind me for 10 laps yesterday in my DRS and I was also behind Carlos for about eight laps in his DRS and overtaking wasn’t straightforward.
“So I knew, I just sort of said to myself, ‘do what you do best, no heroics and you’ll win this race.'”
Russell admitted that “it’s a bit of a strange one to win a race like this, for sure.
“But as I said, it’s racing. Sometimes it goes against you.
“I feel like we’ve probably missed out on one or two possibilities of victories.
“Montreal was one, arguably Singapore, things could have gone very slightly differently last year and today it went for us. So it’s how the cookie crumbles.”
