After taking pole position during qualifying this Saturday (Friday in the United States), George Russell converted his first place into victory for the first time in his career, at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The Mercedes driver raced from the first to the last lap, taking off with his extremely capable W15 around the Sin City street circuit. Dominators since day one, the Silver Arrows had a dream weekend, leaving with all the best times in free practice, pole position, and a one-two finish more than 10 seconds behind the rest of the peloton. A result that Russell intends to celebrate.
“I had planned to take the plane in a few hours, but I will definitely not take this flight and I will enjoy this evening with my whole team”explained the winner of the race, interviewed in front of the Bellagio fountains. “It's a dream weekend. I don't know how we did it, but I'm just riding this wave right now.”
“Vegas is a crazy place. And when you're racing, you see all this in the background, such… I can't even describe this place. So, to get the win here, the pole position, to dominate the week -end, to do a double with Lewis, you know, we couldn't have picked a better place for it to happen.”
After a very good start and good resistance to the only attack made by Charles Leclerc at the start of the race, Russell was never really worried by his competitors during the rest of the event. The Briton, however, admitted to having driven with the fear that something would ruin his race, as may have been the case during his retirement at Silverstone or his disqualification at Spa.
“I was waiting for something to happen”he declared. “The two races where I had pole before, it was always chaos. Whether it was raining or dry, something always happened. The last race in Brazil with the red flag [aussi].”
“I was confident here. I had a good lead, but I was waiting for something to happen. And it didn't. So I think my luck changed. And yes, I'm very happy Right now.”
Avec Pablo Elizalde
