George Russell explains why he thinks the FIA should not intervene further in the Qatar weekend – Brit defends his tyre choice in the sprint
Pirelli and the FIA are currently considering restricting the use of tyres at Sunday’s Qatar Grand Prix. After minor damage to the tyres was discovered on Friday, the track limits in turns 12 and 13 have already been adjusted.
Further measures could follow for Sunday. Pirelli will examine the tyres again after Saturday’s sprint, and if they are not satisfied with the results, three mandatory pit stops could be prescribed for Sunday’s race.
In addition, a set of tyres could then be used for a maximum of 20 laps. Mercedes driver George Russell thinks this is excessive. He was “a bit sceptical”, but the new track limits are “good”, he clarifies on the one hand.
At the same time, however, he stresses: “I don’t think they need to intervene to stipulate that three stops are compulsory. I think they should give us the data [from Pirelli] […] and we should all be smart enough to make a decision on that basis. “
Russell: Teams should be allowed to decide for themselves
Meaning Russell would leave the responsibility to the teams themselves. He explains, “Even with the ten laps we’ve done [at race pace], you should be able to see what the wear and tear is and how it would have developed if there had been a race for [a full] 19 laps.”
That’s because there were a total of three safety car periods in Saturday’s 19-lap sprint, which raises the question of whether Pirelli was able to collect enough data to analyse at all. Russell, however, believes it should be possible to deduce from the laps driven “how this will affect tomorrow.”
Basically, “it’s just part of a sprint weekend” that teams can’t collect much data in just one practice session. He explains, “When we practice on a track like Barcelona, we know that in the race, after we’ve gathered all the information, we’ll have to make two or three stops.”
“If you try to do it with one stop, it just won’t work. And this weekend we just didn’t have any data. If we had the three [practice] sessions, we would have learned that the tyres wear and you have to make two or three stops,” he believes.
Russell’s wishes: better communication and no track limits
That’s why he thinks further intervention by the FIA is unnecessary. Instead, it would be better to work on communication with the drivers. Because Russell found out about the whole situation around the tyres “through a message on WhatsApp from another driver.”
“I can’t remember who it was. It was in our group chat, which of course is not ideal,” he points out, explaining, “I think Nikolas Tombazis and Steve Nielsen know and realise that the communication between the FIA and the drivers is not strong enough.”
“And there needs to be better cooperation because many of these things have a direct impact on us. And we can also give our first-hand view from the cockpit, which can help with some of these decisions,” Russell said.
“I think this was a good example for them that we need to improve this communication process,” Russell points out. Another issue to work on, he says, is the track limits. The Mercedes driver would prefer to abolish them altogether.
“It’s very simple: build tracks that don’t allow [the drivers] to exceed the track limits. We don’t have that problem in Suzuka,” he shrugs. At Silverstone, for example, there are almost no difficulties with this.
There are only “a handful of circuits” where track limits are a problem at all. “So it’s pretty clear. They just need to build a better track,” thinks Russell, who finished fourth in Saturday’s Qatar sprint after potentially leading the race at one stage.
Why the soft tyres were “not stupid” in the sprint
Russell had started from fourth on the grid and – unlike the top 3 ahead of him who were on medium – opted for the soft tyres. “We didn’t go in with the mentality that it was going to be a risk or a gamble,” he clarifies regarding the tyre choice.
“We didn’t use the tyre in practice, we thought it was similar to the medium. And we thought we had to collect the data [on the soft] before tomorrow. If we had started with the medium, I think we would have finished in the same place,” he believes.
So Russell did move up from P4 to P2 on the soft tyres right at the start and even took the lead shortly afterwards. But because the soft degraded too quickly, he dropped back to P4 behind Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris by the end of the race.
Russell clarifies that he did not start on Soft to save a set of Mediums for the race. “We really thought the soft tyre would be a viable race tyre,” he points out, explaining that the same compound (C3) had worked well at Silverstone.
“But this track with the new tarmac is clearly a bit different,” he has now noted, also explaining, “I don’t think we’ve ever had a sprint race where the tyre degraded like that.”
“With all the information we had from the previous ten or twelve sprint races, we’ve never had a race like that, so the decision wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t a gamble, it was made with the right process. It just didn’t work out,” Russell said.
