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Russell at a loss to explain heavy Mexico City FP2 crash
George Russell says he doesn’t understand the reason for his heavy crash in FP2 at the Mexico City Grand Prix that left Mercedes with a major rebuild overnight.
For the second successive weekend, Russell crashed heavily and had to be cleared from the medical center at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez due to the size of the impact. He was quickest in the first practice session but then lost control over the curb at Turn 8 early in FP2 and spun into the wall at high speed.
“Honestly, don’t know what happened,” Russell said. "The car started bouncing on the ground and before I had a chance to catch it, I was already spinning.
“A lot of work for the guys tonight again. It seems like it’s one thing after another at the moment. It’s frustrating. [In] FP1 we were very strong, very fast. Tried to take the same line, cutting that corner, and for whatever reason on this occasion in FP2 the thing just started going on me.”
Despite the crash, Russell believes it wasn’t as costly as usual due to the elongated tire test format of FP2, and he hopes to be able to recover during the final practice session on Saturday.
“I mean FP2… because it was the Pirelli tire test, it wasn’t hugely valuable in terms of what you learn for the race weekend," he said. "Obviously missed out on laps. FP3 is going to be important; just hope we can get the car fixed.”
Teammate Lewis Hamilton also didn’t have a normal start to the weekend as Kimi Antonelli drove in his place in FP1 and then the tire test took over FP2, but he sees some encouraging signs from the running he completed.
“It’s a tire test so we couldn’t change anything on the car – it was the same from the beginning to the end,” Hamilton said. “I know what we need to fix. Whether or not we can actually do that, we’ll see. But it didn’t feel terrible; little bit off the front guys. Got some work to do tonight.”
Presented by:
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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