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George Russell recognised that it was necessary to step into action at the British Grand Prix.
The Brit stopped his car and rushed over to assist marshals after Zhou Guanyu’s horrific crash at Silverstone.
During qualifying, George got P8 and started his race on hard tyres driving at full pace towards the chequered flag.
The Start
Image Credit: F1.The Mercedes driver declared, “We took a gamble starting on the hards because I didn’t do a good enough job in qualifying, and we were starting out of position. We felt like it was our best opportunity to fight for a podium today, and it was. But we knew it would have been very difficult on Lap 1 and it turned out to be extremely difficult. I couldn’t get any temperatures on the tyres on the formation lap, and I just got swamped by all the cars and next thing I know I got a touch from behind, [went] in the side of Zhou and we saw the rest.“
The crash resulted in a red flag reducing the driver count on the grid. It was well intense seeing Zhou’s car flip and roll away. The crowd cooled down once the Chinese driver was rescued from his car.
The Emotion
Russell revealed, “I saw the race was red flagged, so I knew it was safe to jump out. I wanted to go see if [Zhou] was okay and if I could have helped in anyway. When I came back, I couldn’t get the car turned on, but I don’t know, there was no reason why I shouldn’t have been able to because the car was fine.”
That was an unfortunate situation to return to. However, George finds himself holding fifth with 111 points in the driver standings. He’s still a real contender in this competition.
Image Credit: Mercedes.The Reaction
The 24-year old said, “I ran back to the team to check and when I came back, the car was on the flat bed [truck] already. I asked the marshal to make sure that they didn’t pick the car up and as it turned out there was nothing wrong with the car bar a puncture. It’s really frustrating because we had the pace to definitely come back through to P6 as a minimum. So many emotions… [but] glad to see that Zhou is doing okay. It’s horrible to see an incident like that.”
It was helpful and heroic for George Russell to show compassion. It shows real character and maturity from the young driver.
Team Response
Team Principal, Toto Wolff stated, “In Austria, there will be a couple of corners which haven’t made our car happy in the past but it’s a constant learning process for us. This year is going to be a pretty tough one to win but we just need to get our house in order to be properly on top of the car’s performance. It was disappointing for George not to be in the race because the car pace was good but that’s the regulation so it is what it is, unfortunately.”
Mercedes is managing in third with 204 points in the constructor standings. Maybe Mercedes may step up in Austria soon.
Headline Image Credit: F1.