On the back of another eye-catching qualifying performance and race result at the the Bahrain Grand Prix, George Russell has revealed that he had to cope with a series of technical problems during the 57 laps of the Sakhir race.
Despite struggling for overall grip across the practice sessions, George Russell made inroads in qualifying in a way that he was able to challenge the McLarens for pole position.
The Briton was then handed a one-place grid drop penalty due to a sporting mistake from his team, but he was able to regain the lost ground at the start, overtaking Charles Leclerc into Turn 1. He ran second to race leader Oscar Piastri for much of the race.
Able to pit for a second time under the Safety Car, he managed to make a set of softs last to the end despite some in-car failures that included his DRS, brake-by-wire and telemetry going down. Despite the technical gremlins, he was able to hold off a late charge by the other McLaren of Lando Norris to take another podium finish.
Asked about how difficult it has been to keep Norris at bay, Russell has revealed that it was a tough ask to maintain his position given the difficulties he has had.
“Yeah, it was exceptionally difficult towards the end. I had all sorts of problems with the car. The steering wheel, I was losing all my data and the brake pedal went into a failure mode, so I had to do all these resets. One minute the brakes were working properly, the next they weren’t. So I was pretty pleased when I saw the chequered flag, to be honest.
“Yeah, I don’t really know how that happened. It was something to do with all these failures we were having. As soon as I saw it opened, I backed off. I lost two tenths of a second. It never happened again throughout. I didn’t actually click the DRS button – I clicked another button and it opened. As I said, I lost a lot more than I gained – I don’t think I even gained anything because it was open for less than a second.
Pushed on to reveal how satisfying his latest second-place finish was, Russell said that while the position was not extraordinary, he took delight in the fact that Mercedes were able to stay close to the field-leading McLaren.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve not actually had that many P2s to be honest. I’ve had a few P3s, but we did not expect to be anywhere close to McLaren this weekend. Qualifying on the front row was a real surprise. And then seeing Lando right up there on lap one behind me, I thought, “He’s going to fly off into the distance here.” Oscar did an amazing job to control the race, but to keep Lando at bay, I was really, really pleased about.
“Yeah, a lot of confidence, to be honest. This was the real sort of test for us. We knew that our car likes the cold conditions, and the competitiveness we showed in China and Suzuka was no major surprise. But this was going to be the question mark – here in Bahrain. And we’ve had another strong weekend. So it bodes well for the season.
Norris continued: “I’d love to say so, but I don’t think we are, to be honest. McLaren are just too dominant right now. I think this is probably going to be their peak performance – what we saw this week in Bahrain. And what we saw in China and Suzuka is probably their worst-case scenario and they still obviously got one victory from those two races.
“So we’ve got to keep on picking up the points, picking up the pieces. And this weekend we picked up the pieces to get a P2 – and we did it in Melbourne as well to get the P3. I don’t expect this to continue for many races to come, but who knows.”
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