George Russell used a set of medium compound tyres to set the fastest time in the first stage of qualifying.
He agreed with his team to save the set for later use, but was surprised when they put him on soft tyres for his final run in Q3. He was clearly unhappy after finishing the session in sixth place.
Afterwards Russell said he should have started higher on the grid. “It was looking pretty good at one point,” he told the official Formula 1 channel. “Obviously I was quickest in Q1, I was pretty happy on those mediums.
“Q2 wasn’t too bad either, but we just got slower as the session progressed, so that was a real shame. We definitely under-performed in Q3.”
Russell said he told the team after Q1 he wanted to use the mediums again. He asked his race engineer Marcus Dudley: “Do you want to save this set?” Dudley replied: “Yeah affirm.”
After getting through Q2 on softs, Russell used softs again for his first run in Q3. That left him fifth-quickest, 0.234 seconds off Max Verstappen’s provisional pole position time.
On his way back into the pits Russell checked with the team if they wanted to stick with the plan, though again he did not explicitly refer to using the medium tyres. “Yeah, affirm, we think we stick on plan,” replied Dudley.
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However the pair appeared to misunderstand each other. As Russell began to drive out of the garage to begin his final run and saw he had another set of softs on his car he asked: “we’ve got the softs on, is that right?”
“Affirm,” Dudley answered. “Thought I said I wanted the mediums?” said Russell.
With no time left to change his tyres, the pair did not discuss the compound choice further on the radio. Russell failed to improve on his final lap and fell to sixth place, which will become fifth after Lewis Hamilton’s penalty.
He drove back to the pits without saying anything. After pulling to a stop he sat for a short while, then said only “talk later” before climbing out.
“Obviously there was a bit of miscommunication with the tyre choice,” he said afterwards. “P5 starting tomorrow, it’s not amazing but hopefully we can fight from there.”
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