George Russell demands Mercedes talks after "totally wrong" info ruined Dutch GP

28 August 2023 , 07:52

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George Russell demands Mercedes talks after "totally wrong" info ruined Dutch GP

Mercedes driver George Russell wants to hold talks with his team after they got their tactics dramatically wrong at the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday.

The British driver had qualified to start third on the grid, but the Silver Arrows had not envisaged the torrential downpours that arrived early on in the race. But they seemingly delayed their inevitable tyre change with Russell called into the pits on lap four, shortly after team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

Both drivers were left outside of the top-10 as a result, but made up ground before the race was red flagged with eight laps to go amid more heavy rain. When conditions eased enough to allow restart, Hamilton was sixth and Russell eighth. But for the 25-year-old, there was another cruel twist as he duly collided with McLaren man Lando Norris at Turn 11.

Forced to head back to the pits to have a puncture repaired, he did return to the track and managed to take the chequered flag, but laboured across the line in 17th place. "The race was over before it really got started," Russell said afterwards. "I think the information we had regarding the weather was totally wrong. So that was a real shame. A podium was missed."

And Russell demanded that Mercedes hold discussions about how their day at Circuit Zandvoort went so drastically wrong, despite Hamilton recovering to take sixth place: "As a team we need to review because we're getting the information coming in to us and it was misjudged, the weather," he added.

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"So, it's not anything to do with racing or engineering, it was clearly just a weather misinterpretation and that ruined our afternoon. So, we really need to look into what happened, why the others decided to pit, what information they maybe had that we didn't and make sure we don't make the same mistake again."

Toto Wolff admitted Mercedes got it badly wrong (Getty Images)

He also described the clash with Norris as "disappointing," but stopped short of directing any blame towards his British compatriot, describing it as a "racing incident." Russell added the weekend represented a missed opportunity given the pace of the W14 cars was impressive.

Toto Wolff himself didn't pull any punches afterwards, admitting, the team had been ill-prepared for the severity of the downpours: "We stayed out catastrophically too long, completely wrong," he told Sky Sports. "And that's annoying because the car had great pace."

The race was eventually won by Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who equalled the all-time record of nine victories in a row. That extended his Championship lead over teammate Sergio Perez to a mammoth 138 points.

Fraser Watson