George Russell was surprised by how "violent" the result was when he hit a sausage kerb after making a mistake at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The Brit shared the second row with team-mate Lewis Hamilton on the grid. And the Mercedes pair got off to a great start with a strong launch off the line.
Hamilton immediately moved past Fernando Alonso and Russell came close, before having to pull out of the move. Still, though, he was well-placed to fight for the podium – until he made the error which, eventually, ended his race.
He ran wide at Turn 8 which meant he took a trip over the sausage kerbs at the following corner. Having been thrown up into the air, he was unable to prevent the right side of his Mercedes from whacking into the wall.
"I went a bit wide into Turn 8, knew I was going to hit the kerb but I wasn't expecting the sausage kerb to have such a violent response," said Russell. "The next thing, I am in the air and lost the rear when I landed, then in the wall.
"It all happened really quite suddenly. Sorry to the team, for sure there was P3 and P4 in the car for us both but positives to take away that the car was reasonably competitive."
The safety car came out and he was able to crawl back to the pits for a check over. He came back out and was making decent progress back through the field – it seemed he had gotten away with it.
But, eventually, he got the call over the radio he would have been dreading. Mercedes were concerned about the state of the car and the team took the decision to call him back into the pit lane where they would retire the car.
While Jenson Button had some sympathy for Russell, the Sky Sports pundit made it clear just how costly the Brit's mistake might turn out to be. He said: "Most corners around the world he'd be fine, he's just run wide, but you've got the walls up against the kerb here on the edge of the track.
"It's unusual for George to make a mistake like that. He won't sleep well and will wake up pretty upset as well with himself but, you know, we've got Austria around the corner. But it's a lot of points lost for the team.
"We don't normally say that with Mercedes because they're out front a lot of the time and it's not so important for them. They're actually in a fight in the championship with Aston and Ferrari aren't too far behind."
