Russell: British GP was "not how I wanted my home race to go"

On the back of a disappointing result at last Sunday's British Grand Prix, Mercedes driver George Russell said that the Silverstone race was "not how I wanted my home race to go."

Mercedes had a challenging weekend at Silverstone. The Brackley-based outfit struggled for pace on Friday, but George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli still managed to secure fourth and seventh place in qualifying.

With the race having taken place in changeable conditions, there were several key decision points that derailed Mercedes’ day at Silverstone.

George Russell pitted on the formation lap which was a few laps too early given the wet track surface in Sector 3. It meant that the Briton lost valuable race time in the opening stages of the race.

His team-mate Kimi Antonelli pitted for slicks during the virtual safety car, but it also proved a bit too early and as he elected to put on hards he massively struggled for tyre temperatures.

Russell and Antonelli switched back to the Intermediate tyre as heavy rain fell after 10 laps before several Virtual Safety Car and Safety Car interruptions brought racing to a halt.

After the action got back underway, the Bologna-born driver was hit from behind by the Racing Bull of Isack Hadjar who was unsighted by spray. The subsequent diffuser damage forced the Italian into an early retirement.

In the meantime, Russell made it back into the points, he once again made an early switch to slicks as the track dried. After rejoining, he spun at Turn 10 and lost ground. He fought back into the top-10 but could only bring home a solitary point in P10.

"It’s always difficult making the right calls in conditions like today but sadly, we didn’t manage to do that. We opted to go to the Hard tyre after the formation lap and we then had a 25-minute window of dry weather, which should have enabled us to put them to good use.

"Unfortunately, we had 15-minutes of Virtual Safety Car running. Once we were running, we were seconds a lap quicker than others but just had too much time to make up.

"We were then a few laps too early pitting back to the slick tyre after the track had dried once again. We put on the Hard tyre and suffered with warm-up issues.

"I spun and lost ground; we were fortunate to be able to fight back to P10 but overall, that was a bad day and not how I wanted my home race to go. We will look to learn from this and ensure we come back stronger before the summer break."