Russell eye Mercedes wins after impressive drive in Spain

George Russell was able to put Saturday’s qualifying woes firmly to bed during the Grand Prix in Barcelona, a strong start setting up his charge from 12th on the grid to third.

This waa the first time the Mercedes man grabbed a podium finish of the season.

Russell made an electric getaway on the softs, getting past the medium-clad Sergio Perez and Pierre Gasly before taking to the escape road to avoid contact with the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg. Although the stewards had a look at his start to see if he’d gained an advantage at any point by running wide, it was soon clear that he had taken those places on merit before heading off-track.

Russell back on podium after impressive drive

He did make one mistake early on, reporting that he could see some drops of rain on his visor. That caused all sorts of kerfuffle in the pit lane with engineers looking to the heavens to see if the rain had started to fall – only for Russell to soon admit that he might have jumped the gun.

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“I had a bit of an issue when I started the race because I didn’t put all my hair in my balaclava so I had hair dangling down and it was sort of flickering in front of my eyes, so that was annoying,” Russell admitted with a wry smile.

Both Hamilton and Russell managed to pass Sainz to set up double Mercedes podium.

“And then as I started to sweat, it was dripping down my hair and every time I was braking, it was jumping onto the visor on the inside. It took me about four laps to realise what was going on, when I wiped my visor, and the water didn’t disappear. I put two and two together and worked it out.”

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Aside from making his engineer chuckle with relief at his report that it wasn’t in fact rain after all, Russell also demanded some praise mid-way through the race after a daring move on Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari that saw him take third on the track.

His engineer had called it “solid work,” to which Russell retorted “only solid?” and was only satisfied when team boss Toto Wolff added in some more exuberant praise.

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