George Russell has claimed that he was “half a centimetre” from ending up airborne when he made an overtake on Sergio Perez during Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix.
Russell surrendered third place on the grid when he locked up behind Oscar Piastri’s McLaren at Turn 1 on the first lap and cut across the chicane, slipping to seventh.
The Briton was unable to regain ground as Mercedes could not live with the pace McLaren or Ferrari had at Monza, with Russell’s attention turning to Perez’s Red Bull.
But despite being overtaken on Lap 11, Russell recomposed and 20 laps later he was in a position to mount an attack which saw him miss the opening chicane again.
However, Russell wasn’t deterred and seven tours later on Lap 38 he cruised past using DRS on the main straight to retrieve his eventual seventh-place finishing place.
Russell, though, has taken an issue with an aggressive dart that Perez made to the right which could have resulted in him sustaining a dangerous high-speed incident.
“I mean fun, I’m not sure you can just describe that fun, because I thought I was about to go airborne when he was squeezing me at 340 [kph],” Russell expressed.
“But yeah, hard racing and at least glad to make it one position.”
Russell believes that Perez moving over even the slightest bit more would have been enough to push him onto the grass and render him a passenger in the Mercedes.
“It was right at the very, very limit,” he added. “We didn’t crash and I got past, but it was half a centimetre more and it would have been a different story.”
Meanwhile, Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff concurred with Russell’s assessment that Perez’s late slice across was right on the edge in regard to the regulations.
“I’m trying to be objective, and with the George incident on Turn 1, it’s probably racing that can happen,” Wolff assessed.
“But with Checo, that was a move under braking. Was there enough gap, when the gap was tiny? But still, the move came late.”
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