Mercedes’ George Russell was left feeling “frustrated” as rain condemned him to a premature elimination from Sprint Qualifying at Formula 1’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Russell’s initial attempt in SQ2 when the Shanghai International Circuit was still suitable for slick running left him in 11th and outside the places to advance to SQ3.
But while the British driver ventured out for a second run in the closing minutes, the forecasted rain then began to fall and curtailed his chances of advancing further.
With the teams aware the rain was set to arrive, Russell bemoaned ending up at the wrong end of a queue of cars waiting in the pit lane for the session to commence.
“Yeah it wasn’t easy at all,” Russell said.
“There was one lap in Q2, we tried sending it as early as we could and then obviously got stuck behind I think 12 cars were ahead of us just sat in the pit lane.
“So yeah, lost the tyre temperature and then, you know, it was close, one more tenth and you’re four or five positions higher and obviously it’s just a shame to be on the bottom end of that.
“But it’s Sprint Qualifying and [we’ve] got a chance to recover in the Sprint race.”
Russell admitted that he was “a little bit frustrated” when the rain fell at the end of SQ2 dashing his chances of finding the four-hundredths he needed to advance.
“Our first lap, it was so close, you know, getting into Q3 and just challenging conditions, obviously the rain falling down now, who knows what could have happened in Q3,” he said.
“But as I said, you’ve got the Sprint race tomorrow, [we can] recover some positions and then get another chance to qualify tomorrow afternoon.”
Limited to a single practice hour and session run in changeable conditions, it’s difficult to collect an accurate gauge of where the competitive pecking order stands.
The lack of grip has been notable in Shanghai so far this weekend and Russell believes it is worse than drivers first feared, meaning the form book isn’t easy to read.
“Well, the grip’s really, really low here compared to what we were expecting for everybody,” he added.
“I think the lap times are probably three or four seconds slower than anticipated.
“There’s no other junior series here like F2 or F3 to help rubber the track in, so for everyone you’re slipping and sliding around, we’ve only done a practice on the hard tyre, obviously just two laps in qualifying on the medium tyre, it’s really quite challenging to judge.”
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