George Russell believes he could have potentially dropped outside of the points places during the Qatar Grand Prix Sprint Race without the intervention of the Safety Car.
Having opted to start on the Soft tyre for the 19-lap dash, Russell propelled past Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, both on Mediums, before nipping by Oscar Piastri for the lead two laps later into Turn 6.
However, the Briton’s Soft tyres rapidly began to degrade, enabling both Piastri and Verstappen to easily swoop back past.
Despite enquiring about the possibility of making a pitstop late on, Mercedes turned down Russell’s request, leaving him to fend off those behind upon the final restart.
Although he eventually lost out on a top-three spot to the recovering McLaren of Lando Norris on the penultimate lap, Russell still made it to the chequered flag in fourth.
Russell, though, concedes that his Soft tyre gamble could easily have backfired and led to him being shuffled outside of the top eight without several Safety Car periods.
“I really enjoyed that! The first lap was a little bit wild,” he reflected.
“I had Turn 6 in my mind as the overtaking opportunity on the Medium runners. I knew I would have the advantage at the beginning, so I was pleased to pull off the move on Piastri.
“I was surprised by how quickly the Soft tyre dropped off and we were fortunate that there were a number of Safety Car interventions. Without that, we may have finished outside the points.
“That is what can happen during a Sprint weekend though where you have limited practice and limited knowledge on the tyres.”
Russell contends that matching the three cars ahead of him on the grid by electing to run on the Medium compound would have yielded the exact same result for him.
Looking ahead to tomorrow’s grand prix, Russell was encouraged by the pace advantage Mercedes upheld over Ferrari, with the pair only separated by 20 points.
“Having said that, if we were on the Medium we would have still finished P4,” he acknowledged. “Nothing gained, nothing lost.
“It was positive to see our pace advantage over Ferrari today. We were on the same tyres as them and we were faster. We are in a great place tomorrow to fight against the McLarens too. It’s going to be interesting from a strategy perspective so let’s see what we can do.”
Meanwhile, team-mate Lewis Hamilton endured a nightmare Sprint Shootout earlier in the day, dropping out in SQ2 after having a lap time deleted for exceeding track limits.
But the seven-time World Champion was able to capitalise on a three-car crash ahead and the better durability of the Medium rubber to navigate his way back to fifth in the closing laps, one place behind Russell.
“I was quite slow at the beginning on the Medium tyre,” he noted. “I knew that the degradation would be high though and that the race would come back to us.
“Did I know that I was going to be able to get back up to fifth? No, but I was hoping I could the whole time. I tried to position my car the best I could, stay out of trouble and progress one step at a time.”
Hamilton had appeared the stronger of the two Mercedes drivers during Friday qualifying but a mistake on his final run allowed Russell to pip him to the front row.
After winding up nine places shy of Russell in the Shootout, the Briton concedes that he must improve his qualifying performance.
“The car is still tricky to drive but our pace overall was good,” he continued. “I know I’ve got the race craft on lock. I just need to work on my qualifying!”
