George Russell crashed at the end of qualifying for the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix, but claimed it was his best in terms of pace, worst in terms of the outcome.
Just when Mercedes thought things could not get any worse on after Lewis Hamilton binned his W13 halfway in Q3 of qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, Russell went ahead and crashed his car as well, minutes after his teammate’s car was cleared from the track.
What made thing worse is that the eight-time Formula 1 Constructors’ Champions were showing some decent form at a circuit where they usually struggled historically, even in their dominant years, pre-2022, as their drivers and especially Hamilton who seemed to be on his way to set a strong result.
All that went down the drain when both drivers crashed out, but Russell tried to be remain upbeat as he reflected on qualifying in his team’s post session report.
Russell absolutely went for it
“I think that was our best qualifying session of the year in terms of pure pace – and the worst in terms of the outcome,” he said.
“Racing can be like that sometimes,” Russell lamented. “I could have been P4 this afternoon and I was one tenth up on my lap, and absolutely went for it because I thought there was a chance of P3.
“I’m feeling fine physically – but I’m concerned about the car,” the Briton admitted. “I hope we can recover it. In terms of performance, there are positive signs. We have brought some things to the car, and the interpretation of some rules has probably been in our favour, too.”
“Lewis was doing a phenomenal job and absolutely flying today,” he said of his teammate, who seemed to have an edge between the pair. “Maybe I went a bit the wrong direction on set-up for qualifying; but hopefully that will be good for the race.
“Ordinarily we have better race pace than single lap, so hopefully tomorrow, we can make up for today,” the 24-year-old concluded.
Mercedes frustrated by qualifying outcome
Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin commented: “A frustrating finish to what was looking like a decent qualifying session. The car has been working well and first practice was busy and productive.
“The balance was pretty good through that session which is useful with only one hour before qualifying to sort out the setup.
“We’d tweaked the balance a bit going into qualifying and were putting some solid laps in when both drivers had moments and ended up in the wall,” he revealed.
Both W13’s seem to have sustained considerable damage, which may require a gearbox change, not to mentioned spare limitation in the new era of F1 under the budget cap.
“We’ve got our work cut out trying to get the cars onto the grid tomorrow,” Shovlin admitted. “We are still assessing the extent of it but both accidents caused damage to several of the same components on each car, which makes it quite difficult from a spares point of view.
“We’ll do what we can to make sure that both cars are competing. If there is a silver lining to this cloud, it’s that the Sprint gives us some opportunity to make it further up the grid ahead of the main race.
“We’ll be working hard towards that objective,” he concluded.