George Russell has admitted that fifth “is where we deserve to finish” in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after an “underwhelming” Mercedes performance was compounded by overheating tyres.
The Briton started third for the 50-lap race at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit but was left struggling to match the performance of both Max Verstappen and eventual race winner Oscar Piastri in the opening stint on the medium tyre.
Having switched to the hard rubber, Russell tried to close a gap of several seconds to the pair in front but quickly lost performance in his tyres.
He was passed by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and the McLaren of Lando Norris towards the end, with Russell coming over the radio to query whether his front-left tyre was safe to make it to the end of the race, such had been the high rate of wear.
Russell reveals he was ‘really struggling with tyre overheating’ in latter stages in Saudi
“A real surprise, really struggling with tyre overheating,” said Russell. “I was holding on to the front two at the beginning, just by a thread, and then the second stint I was pushing so hard to stay with them and suddenly my tyres got way too hot and I dropped off the cliff and I was losing a second lap in the last seven, eight laps. P5 is where we deserve to finish but the performance was pretty underwhelming today.”
Despite the loss of performance, which left him 27 seconds behind winner Piastri, it continues an impressive run of form for Russell that means he has finished fifth or higher in all five Grands Prix so far this season.
Russell admitted that a lack of long running in practice may have given a false sense of performance heading into the race, with himself and the team unsure how the tyres would perform in the evening conditions.
“This weekend was looking really strong, we did no laps in practice in the long run so I guess we couldn’t really capture the fact that maybe we weren’t on the pace, or we couldn’t capture what the potential problems were going to be,” he added.
“It is interesting, we didn’t expect to be so good in Bahrain and we expected to be stronger here and it turned out to be the opposite, that’s the nature of this sport and everyone is working hard to try and find more performance.”
Antonelli finished sixth but having come close to crashing out
Mercedes team mate Kimi Antonelli finished sixth, seven seconds in arrears, having also struggled with tyre overheating.
The young Italian came close to ending his race in the barrier, though, admitting that he glanced the unforgiving walls twice during the race.
“I was really scared because the one in T4, then I started to have some vibration and I was just praying that it would hold on,” he said.
“Luckily it was just two laps to the end but was not a pleasant moment. Every lap it was more and more pushing closer to the limit and obviously you start to get closer to the walls and so on. Definitely, couple of times I went a bit too close but luckily, I came away with it.”
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