“As for the performance, the gap was more than we were expecting” – George Russell

George Russell was thankful to his mechanics after they repaired his car prior to Saturday’s running at the Red Bull Ring, with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team driver ending the Sprint race in Austria in fourth place.

Russell crashed into the barriers at the final turn during Friday’s Qualifying session to leave the team a lot of work to do overnight, but he was out on track in final practice on Saturday morning before the Sprint race got underway in the afternoon.

The disappointment for Russell was the pace deficit to the cars in front, with Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen more than thirteen seconds ahead after twenty-three laps, and the team will need to work hard overnight to find the reasons why they were so off the pace.

“First, thank you to everyone in the garage to get the car ready today,” said Russell.  “It was a huge team effort, so it was good to get points on the board.

“As for the performance, the gap was more than we were expecting. We were 13 seconds behind after 23 laps, so that’s nearly half a second per lap. We need to work overnight to understand why we dropped off the pace.

“Small things can make a difference – the tyres weren’t easy to manage, and different approaches to downforce levels will play a part tomorrow. But we are in no doubt that we’ve got work to do.”

“As for the performance, the gap was more than we were expecting” – Lewis Hamilton

Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was also thankful to his mechanics after they repaired his car following his crash in Qualifying, but the Briton was made to work hard to score a single point in eighth.

Hamilton made contact with Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly at turn one on lap one and was then in the middle of a trio of cars heading into turn three, but despite a little bit of damage to his car, he was able to keep facing the right way.

The seven-time World Champion passed Valtteri Bottas to run ninth but was made to work hard to pass Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher for eighth, eventually managing it after the German lost the use of his Drag Reduction System (DRS) after dropping back from team-mate Kevin Magnussen.

“I’m grateful I managed to survive out there today,” said Hamilton.  “The team did such a great job to get the car back together last night and this morning. A bit thankyou to them and I’m glad I brought it back mostly in one piece.

“I didn’t have a good start, then Pierre moved across on me at Turn One. I don’t understand why drivers do that when there’s so much space to the right, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Then the same happened in Turn Three with a Williams and Red Bull. I got some sort of damage, but at least could continue.

“After that, I was just trying to catch up. We are slower on the straights, so I had to wait until I was out of the DRS train to overtake the cars in front. That’s why it took a few laps to get ahead of Mick. Hopefully we can race stronger tomorrow – fingers crossed!”

Lewis Hamilton finished eight in the Sprint race – Credit: Wolfgang Wilhelm