It could have been a disaster. George Russell broke his front wing in Q2, saw his car come to a standstill in the middle of the track in Q3, struggled with an engine that wouldn’t start and a gearbox that wouldn’t shift. And yet the Briton will be on the front row of the grid tomorrow for the Chinese GP, alongside polesitter and teammate Kimi Antonelli. “This was pure damage limitation,” Russell said immediately afterwards.
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“In Q2 my front wing broke and in Q3 the car stopped on the track. The car wouldn’t start and then I couldn’t shift. But I’m happy to be here in the top three.” That Russell even completed a flying lap in Q3 was thanks to the lightning-fast work of the Mercedes mechanics.
As the clock ticked down, they solved the problem and sent their driver out onto the track anyway. Only: that lap was far from perfect. “On my flying lap my battery was empty and I had no temperature in my tires,” Russell said. “But my team did a fantastic job to get me back into this position, because it could have been much worse.”
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