Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord has explained why George Russell pitted under the virtual safety car despite starting on hard tyres in Formula 1’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Russell was the only driver from the top teams not to stick to a one-stop on a Madring track where overtaking was at a premium, which was largely down to the timing of the VSC intervention.
Race control neutralised the race at the end of lap 14, which played into the hands of the top four drivers, who started on medium or soft tyres – except Lando Norris, who was already past the pitlane entry when the VSC was announced.
The likes of Charles Leclerc and Russell, however, started the race on the hard compound. Leclerc stayed out and led the race until his lap-45 pitstop, while the Mercedes driver switched to mediums under the VSC and then back to hards on lap 28.
Meanwhile, Mercedes team-mate and championship leader Kimi Antonelli triumphed after the fortunate timing of the neutralisation took polesitter Norris out of his way.
“The VSC worked very differently for George, it fell at the worst possible time for him given that he'd started the race on hards and was looking to run long and capitalise on any events later in the race,” Lord detailed.
“He headed into the race starting on the hard tyre from P6 with a plan to do a one-stop. When the VSC came out he was the second car running on the hard tyre behind Leclerc's Ferrari. Therefore we called for George to do a ‘box opposite to Leclerc’.
“Why? Because had we not done so he would have simply followed Leclerc to the finish. The opportunity to undercut was very, very limited, and the opportunity to overtake was almost non-existent for cars on similar age tyres.
“So we put George onto the medium. We knew that medium wasn't going to be able to do 43 laps to the end, but in doing something different – so George did a 20-lap stint, and then we jumped back onto the hard tyre, because you wanted to be on that hard tyre for as much of the race as possible.
“George then unleashed some really impressive performance. He was going quick enough that he actually pulled Leclerc into the pits probably earlier than Ferrari had wanted to and so that pulled Leclerc in, gave Kimi the free air up front but also then George was pressuring Leclerc in those final laps on that soft tyre that was quite fragile, and actually ended the race only 0.7 seconds behind.
“After the race George was very pragmatic, he said he didn't really think it mattered what we'd have done, whether we'd have left him out or boxed him, he was always likely to finish in P5 given the difficulty of overtaking at the Madring.”
Despite setting the fastest lap by four tenths, Russell’s lowly result was another blow to his championship hopes. The Briton now lies 81 points adrift of Antonelli and openly feels “exceptionally unlikely” to even fight for the title.
