George Russell did not have the last word in his opposition to his team on whether to return to the pits when the rain increased. The Mercedes F1 driver wanted to stay on the track to take advantage of a possible red flag, which the three drivers who finished on the podium managed to do, and he regrets that this decision was imposed on him.
“Yes it was very painful. They told me 'go back', I said 'I'm staying on the track', they told me again 'go back', I said again that I was staying on the track, and they They said again to go back, as I said, I wanted to stay outside and in the end, we have to do it. says Russell. “Sometimes you have to trust your instincts.”
“The last time I trusted my instincts it went pretty well. Who knows if we could have won the race? But if we hadn't made the stop we would have been leading at the restart and we would have controlled the pace for the first 30 laps, with Lando behind us, we had very good straight line speed. Second place would have been a minimum.
The Briton reveals that it was Andrew Shovlin, the director of on-track engineering, who made the decision to bring him in. In the absence of Toto Wolff this weekend, it was Shovlin who was the decision-maker and leader of the team in Sao Paulo.
“From the team's point of view, it's not obvious at all. From the cockpit it was very clear that there would be a red flag or a safety car, because the conditions were impassable.”
“The rain wasn't letting up. I could see the big black cloud above me. And then I had Shov jump at the chance, as if he had overtaken my engineer to say 'box '. We work as a team, we try to make the best decisions in the moment.
“Clearly the guys who didn't pit stop finished 1-2-3 and we finished higher than the riders who pit pitted, so I take a little satisfaction from that.”
