George Russell has called on Mercedes to hold a “proper sit down” to discuss the circumstances which led to a “disaster” Q1 exit at Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Mercedes opted to cover another possible rain shower with the choice to send Russell out as soon as Q1 resumed once Sergio Perez’s stranded Red Bull was cleared.
But while Russell improved on his lap to go 10th, the conditions remained stable and several drivers improved on a drier track to demote the Briton into the drop zone.
Russell would rue not having enough fuel in his Mercedes W15 to have another crack at the death when the conditions were at their best during the opening segment.
The ex-Williams racer has conceded that he should’ve produced a better time earlier on but questioned the decision not to ensure he would be on the track at the end.
“It was on me at the beginning. I didn’t think it was going to rain again so I just thought, ‘the track will get quicker’,” Russell admitted.
“I took it easy on lap one and suddenly it started raining and that was the most important lap.
“But it didn’t matter, the end was the quickest and we had no fuel in the car to finish the session. No idea how that happened, and a total disaster.”
Russell has demanded that Mercedes now launch an internal review into the events that consigned him to sustaining consecutive Q1 eliminations at the Hungaroring.
With Lewis Hamilton being fortunate to progress through into Q3, Russell has claimed that Mercedes shouldn’t be wasting opportunities now it has a competitive car.
“You can never take your eye off the ball. I think we need to have a proper sit-down as a team to understand what’s going on,” he added.
“We’ve got the car to be fighting for the top three, we shouldn’t be standing here out of Q1. Lewis [Hamilton] only just scraped through into Q3.
“I’m really quite angry right now because we’ve got such a fast car and we can’t be throwing away opportunities like this. [It’ll be] a difficult race.
“We will still be able to come through, maybe fight for the top six, but from P16 it’s not going to be easy.”
Meanwhile, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has expressed the team is responsible over the call which has provided Russell with an uphill task to score respectable points.
“He thinks he should have had the first lap in, where Lewis went P1, he said that was probably taken too easy,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
“The other one, we put enough fuel to the end but it was a different run plan. It was a fast-slow-fast and he decided to do three fast laps.
“But overall, it is 70% the team’s mistake on not fuelling one lap more.”
He added: “It was a total underperformance, literally from everybody involved here,” Wolff told Sky Sports.
“Losing a car in Q1 is just not on – driver-team combination, it shouldn’t happen. At the end, we just didn’t have the pace. A very disappointing day.”
