George Russell believes he could have gone quicker after missing pole position by a tenth of a second and regretted not emulating Max Verstappen’s qualifying strategy.
Verstappen performed two flying laps after a red flag interruption in Q3, claiming pole position by a hundredth of a second. Carlos Sainz Jnr was the only other driver to do the same.
Russell did a single lap which put him on provisional pole position until it was beaten by Oscar Piastri, the only driver to set a time before the red flag, and Verstappen. Russell suspects he could have done better had he also run twice.
“I’ve got mixed feelings because I felt there was a bit more on the table,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure going into that last lap because Oscar had a lap on the board. I think the run plan that Max did with the two laps was a really good one and one we didn’t really consider.
“Just having that lap on the board sort of takes the pressure off. When you go into turn one, you’ve got to really send it and you’re braking at 75 metres [before the corner]. When you’ve got no lap on the board, it’s like, ‘I’ve got no bail-out here if I make the smallest of mistakes.’”
He admitted third on the grid was better than he expected after practice, but said the team will discuss whether they could have done better with their strategy.
“It was discussed, more to actually start on the new [tyre] and put the used ones on after. I’m sure it was discussed on the pit wall, I’m not privy to every single conversation because I’m just driving the car at that point and I put my trust in the team. But it’s something we’ll discuss afterwards.”
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Russell said he would have been bolder with his tyre preparation if he’d had the benefit of an extra lap. “At turn one you’re pushing the tyres to be as cold as possible, and I didn’t have the confidence to push them any cooler. I lost a bit of lap time with my tyres being a bit too hot, because I was just being a little bit too conservative with them.
“[But] P3 is a great place to start. I think the deg[radation] on the medium tyre is going be pretty high, so I hope there will be more opportunities than in Japan.”
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