George Russell Explains Mishap That Caused Mercedes Qualifying Confusion

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after his Q3 result that saw him finish P5, one place behind the Ferrari Charles Leclerc and two places in front of teammate Kimi Antonelli, Russell had some interesting insight:

“Running the medium in Q1 we were the quickest. After Q2 I said I’d like to use the mediums because I felt more comfortable on it."

Russell then elaborated that it was his intention to stick with mediums for the final session, but the team put him on softs. "In all honesty I probably wasn’t totally clear enough. I just said after Q1 I’d like to use the mediums and I sort of re-emphasized during the middle of Q2. I asked if we were sticking to plan and they said yes, but I thought the plan was mediums, they thought the plan was fitting the softs."

"For me I thought it was quite clear because of the performance we showed. A bit of an error on both halves."

He went on to justify his choice of wanting mediums for Q3 success:

"It wasn’t the first time this season that mediums, for some cars at least, have been faster. I’m not going to stand here and say ‘if only’ – we ultimately didn’t do a good job in Q3 anyway. Bit annoying."

Russell believes Mercedes have more pace than home heroes Ferrari

Despite being out-qualified by one of the Ferraris, Russell is confident with the pace of the Mercedes around Monza.

“Our race pace will probably be better than Ferrari- but they’re mighty fast in the straight so we need to try and get ahead of Leclerc from the off. Otherwise, it will be quite a long, frustrating race behind him.”

The Italian Grand Prix race will take place on Sunday 7th at 09:00 ET/06:00 PT - with the weather forecast available here, as well as Grand Prix On SI's own track guide available here.