Russell: “We were lucky”

George Russell continues his good streak. Very solid since joining Mercedes, as evidenced by the fact that he is the only driver to have finished in the top 5 in the first 5 Grand Prix races. In Miami, he was able to rely on a little stroke of luck to help him continue his series.

Starting on hard tires from the 12th position on the grid, Mercedes took the gamble of waiting for a safety car intervention to pit their driver. And the gamble paid off, as on lap 41, Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris collided, necessitating a virtual safety car firstly, before the safety car itself came onto the track. George Russell was able to make a pit stop without losing much time, allowing him to come out in 7th position, right behind Lewis Hamilton. After overtaking his teammate and a mistake from Valtteri Bottas, the young Briton once again entered the top 5.

« I think we were lucky,” Russell reacted. « You look like a genius when this kind of thing happens, but that’s the case when you have a compensation strategy. We had covered P7, so there was no point in stopping, might as well stay out and hope for something like this to happen, and we got a bit of luck today,” Russell concluded.

A result that the former Williams driver still seeks to put into perspective. However, we still haven’t shown the pace that we had on Friday, we showed much more pace than yesterday, but there is still a big gap compared to where we were on Friday and we need to understand why.