George Russell takes two penalties in the shootout and sprint in Austin – Interestingly, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff takes one of them on his head
It was “definitely a rough day”, George Russell judges after Saturday’s US Grand Prix 2023. His disappointing result in the shootout and sprint in Austin: two penalties and in the end only one world championship point
While teammate Lewis Hamilton finished the sprint in second place, Russell saw the chequered flag in seventh place but dropped to P8 due to a five-second time penalty. The Briton had previously overtaken McLaren driver Oscar Piastri off the track.
And in the shootout beforehand he had already collected a grid penalty for getting in the way of Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari. So instead of starting from P8, he only started from P11. “Both penalties were fair and neither was intentional,” he clarifies.
His action against Piastri was “optimistic,” he concedes, admitting, “He had the right to push me off the track. I just tried and thought he would be nice.” But things turned out differently and so Russell collected the penalty.
Wolff deliberately wanted to take penalty
Suspiciously, team boss Toto Wolff takes this on his head. “His penalty was completely justified and we should have given the position back. That was my mistake, because I thought we had more pace to take more than a five-second lead,” he reveals.
So Mercedes suspected there would be a penalty if Russell didn’t give the position back. However, they deliberately took the penalty because they thought he would make up the five seconds on the track by the end of the sprint.
Wheel to wheel up to Turn 1 at the start ⚔️F1Sprint USGP pic.twitter.com/CuJaKoOlmc
– Formula 1 (@F1) October 21, 2023
But his race to catch up eventually ended in seventh place behind Carlos Sainz, who had started on the soft tires. It was a shame that I couldn’t get past Carlos. He was simply too fast compared to us in the corners that mattered,” said an annoyed Russell.
He didn’t really have a good hand from the start on Saturday, however, as Andrew Shovlin, technical director at the circuit, reveals, “George didn’t have a new set of soft tires for his last attempt [in SQ3], which is very costly here.”
“That’s why he wasn’t able to attack the front rows of the grid from the start,” he explains, and Russell himself confirms, “We knew that in the [Shootout], if we did everything right, P6 was the maximum.” In the end, it was only P8 and even only eleventh on the grid because of the penalty.
Russell: Weekend not as bad as it looks
“So it’s been a bit of a strange weekend,” said Russell, who hints that he’s been underperformed in all sessions in Austin so far. While he admits that he was “just not fast” this weekend, and that Austin was not one of his best courses either.
At the same time, he recalls, “I made a big mistake [in Friday’s qualifying] in turn 1. I lost 0.25 to 0.3 seconds and was stronger than Lewis on the rest of the lap. It’s a fine line.”
“If turn 1 had been normal, I would have been P2 or P3 on the grid and we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” he points out, also adding that at the same time Austin has always been one of the best tracks for his teammate.
“I think it’s one of his strongest tracks without question,” he says, with Wolff also explaining on Sky: “It’s a track where Lewis has always been fast.” And although things haven’t gone smoothly for Russell so far this weekend, he’s still hoping for a good result on Sunday at least.
“We have a good starting position for tomorrow and start from P5. We have a good chance of fighting for a podium,” Russell hopes.
