George Russell revealed his disappointment on the Mercedes team radio after he had a horrible race restart after the safety car went in. A safety car was brought out on lap 11 after AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries spun on lap 10 and was forced to retire from the race.
Speaking of his disastrous race start, Russell said on the team radio (as quoted by Mirror), “Well that was a sh** restart, sorry guys”. As a result of his poor restart, he fell from P6 to P8, the place where he also finished the race. Soon after the restart, both Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and his teammate Lewis Hamilton passed him.
George Russell has a poor Azerbaijan Grand weekend
Russell has had a poor Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend as he not only had a disastrous qualifying session on Friday but was also average during the main race on Sunday. The Briton qualified all the way back in eleventh on Friday and finished only eighth on Sunday.
The only thing that he may find solace in is that he took the fastest lap of the race on the final lap. As a result of this disappointing finish, he lost massive points in the championship to his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton.
With 23 points to his name, Russell has only managed to score half the points of Hamilton after the first four race weekends of the season. And when it comes to championship leader Max Verstappen, the 25-year-old Briton is a whopping 64 points behind.
Russell entertained his fans with a feisty exchange with Verstappen
While George Russell was far from his best on both Friday and Sunday, he did have an interesting exchange with Max Verstappen during Saturday’s sprint race. As a result of the Dutchman’s poor race start, he found himself battling the Briton for third place.
Russell made the battle with Verstappen as tense as possible as he barely gave the Red Bull driver any kind of space. Consequently, the two made contact, leaving Verstappen furious. Verstappen would eventually confront Russell after the race and the two would have a heated altercation.
George Russell on his clash with Max Verstappen ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/4PxqrNmyAd
— ESPN F1 (@ESPNF1) April 29, 2023
However, their exchange of words at parc ferme was far from the end of it as the two also gave feisty opinions in their post-race interactions with the media. Verstappen went on to call Russell ‘stupid’ and a ‘princess,’ while the Briton made it clear that he would not make it easy for the Dutchman to get past him just because he was fighting for the title.
