George Russell has lamented enduring a poor Safety Car restart period that he feels denied him a chance to fight for a top five at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
After a disappointing Friday qualifying hour that placed him only 11th on the grid, Russell made a strong start in the race to gain two positions on the opening lap.
The British driver then took advantage of the Safety Car being deployed on Lap 10 to make his mandatory pit stop, rising as high as sixth once the order had shaken out.
However, Russell was then caught out at the first braking zone on the restart, culminating in him swiftly losing out to the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll before Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton dove down his inside into Turn 1 on the following lap.
Russell believes he could have followed up his fourth-place finish in Saturday’s Sprint with another top-five result in the main race without the domino effect initiated by his near miss with Fernando Alonso.
“I think it [the pace of the car] was alright but following and overtaking seems pretty challenging this year for everybody and I think those first couple of laps on the race start or the Safety Car restart… I don’t know what it was like behind, but it was line as stern from where we were,” he told F1TV.
“Little bit disappointing as I had a really good start, made a few positions, really good move around the Safety Car.
“Then I went deep into Turn 1, almost crashed into Fernando, lost position to Lance.. scrappy lap and then lost the position as well to Lewis.
“Ultimately ended up P8 when potentially P5 was on the cards. That’s the way the game works, we need to be quicker, and try [to] come back stronger in Miami.”
With Russell retaining a pit stop’s worth of gap to the group of cars behind, Mercedes took the opportunity to bolt on a fresh set of soft tyres to his car to successfully secure the bonus point for the fastest race lap.
Although both cars finished inside the points as Hamilton came home sixth, Mercedes were outscored by both Aston Martin and Ferrari this weekend.
But with the German team already revealing it will be launching an intense development programme to begin attempts to get on top of its various issues, Russell is holding out hope that Mercedes’ upgrades will deliver an upturn in fortunes for coming races.
“Of course I’m hopeful,” he responded when asked if he is optimistic about the new parts delivering a sizeable step forward.
“Naturally everybody’s gonna be bringing things to the car so the gains may not seem as grand as people may expect, naturally as the whole fields moving forward.
“But hopefully we can do a better job than our competitors; obviously Red Bull are just in a league of their own at the moment, I guess they just cruised to victory.”
