Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 driver George Russell finished fourth at the recently concluded F1 Spanish Grand Prix. It was a lot better than his performance in Monaco last week. However, he believes the crash with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and the deployment of the Safety Car significantly affected his chances at the podium.
The Russell and Verstappen Incident at the Spanish GP
The Spanish GP took a dramatic turn with only six laps left when Mercedes F1’s young driver, Kimi Antonelli, experienced a mechanical issue in his car. Mechanics later traced it to a loss of oil pressure.
The problem led to his early retirement from the race. Then, the event forced a pit stop for the leading cars and subsequently brought out the Safety Car.
The restart had Verstappen aggressively pursuing Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, which later resulted in a contact and pushed him back into fourth place. Along the way, Russell tried to capitalize on an opportunity to overtake, only for the Red Bull driver to make an illegal off-track maneuver to regain his position.
Following that, Red Bull’s race engineer convinced Verstappen to give way to Russell to avoid the looming penalty. As the Mercedes F1 driver did at Turn 5, though, the four-time F1 Drivers Champion quickly returned to his usual speed, causing a collision with the Mercedes’ W16.
For his efforts, stewards handed Verstappen a 10-second penalty, demoting him to the tenth rank at the Spanish GP. On the other hand, Russell claimed the incident compromised his odds of chasing down Leclerc for a podium finish.
No Hard Feelings
Nevertheless, the Mercedes F1 driver was a bit surprised that he was able to keep his pace until the end of the event despite the contact with Verstappen.
“That’s how Max goes racing,” said Russell in a post-race interview. “As I said, he was in P4; I was in P5–I ended up P4, he ended up P10, so from my side, I’m glad that I managed to finish the race.”
“Not really sure what he was thinking because he cost himself and his team a lot of points, so no conversation really required,” he added, showing no sign of ill feelings with his fellow racer.
