“To beat the Alfas, overtaking Tsunoda” – Williams star George Russell had a brilliant race in France but will count himself desperately unlucky to not open his points tally this season.
George Russell gave a fine audition of his credentials for the Mercedes seat next season, with a P12 finish in the French Grand Prix. He finished ahead of both Alfa Romeos, the AlphaTauri of Yuki Tsunoda, and most significantly, the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, who struggled with both the medium and hard tyres.
“To beat the Alfas, overtaking Tsunoda on track to get ahead – we don’t normally do this. It’s just so frustrating, every time we have a good race there’s never any retirements or incident or anything.
“This has happened I think three times now where we’ve finished 12th or something and we’ve had a really strong race. But it’ll come, I’m just really happy with how things panned out.
“It was incredibly difficult to balance between not going too quick and graining the tyre and not going too slow and losing the temperature. And we did a really good job. I was really confident in the car.”
Williams overtake Haas in constructors’ standings
Haas had overtaken Williams to P9 in the overall standings after the race in Baku, but Russell’s result has brought them back to P9. Both teams are yet to open their points account, but the Briton’s best place finish has resulted in them pushing Haas back into the bottom.
“I had this in the back of my mind. If we’re not in the points we need to focus on getting that P9 back in the championship. I mean, we obviously don’t know if Haas will score points this year or not, but it’s making sure we finish as high as possible so we beat them even if we’re on zero points.
“P12 today, back in P9 in the constructors, this is very important for the team.”
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