George Russell reveals how he outsmarted Sergio Perez after VSC restart
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George Russell
In France, Mercedes had a fantastic race. George Russell had earlier said that he and Hamilton could take the fight to Sergio Perez for the podium, and fight they did. Hamilton overtook the Mexican at the start of the race and then kept in front, occupying the podium place. Then Leclerc went into the wall, and he was upgraded to second place.
Towards the end stages of the race, a VSC came out due to Guanyu Zhou’s retirement. George Russell had been tussling with Sergio Perez for the third position at that moment, and this neutralized the battle for a bit. But on the VSC’s end, George Russell made an interesting and incredibly effective tactical decision.
Russell drove much slower than Perez, keeping in line with the delta time, but then as the VSC ended, he drove up to the back of him while still keeping under the speed limit, then blazed past him when the VSC ended, and it seemed like Russell had caught Perez asleep at the wheel. He was able to hold off the charge from the Mexican and get his fourth podium of the season.
George Russell on Perez overtake: “I had one chance”
Everybody was very impressed by George Russell’s move on Sergio Perez, and many also wondered how he just went past so effortlessly. It seems that the Briton had caught Perez off-guard, and then capitalized fully on the mistake. He later revealed that he had planned the move: “I had to pre-empt it. I knew I had one chance when the VSC was ending and when you get it right you can carry the momentum.”
He added: “Maybe he had been a little too quick and had to brake. So, he is braking and I was accelerating.” One has to praise Russell’s ingenuity for coming up with such a manoeuvre, but one must also question what Sergio Perez was doing. The Mexican had struggled all weekend, and the race just compounded his misery, even if he was able to get a satisfactory amount of points and keep ahead of Sainz. Russell was able to hold him off the rest of the laps, and on pace, it seemed that he was by far the worst of the ‘top four’ drivers.
Russell says that Mercedes had expected themselves to be competitive with the ‘second’ drivers: “We expected to match Checo and Carlos, but Max and Charles are ahead of their teammates at the moment, and Lewis and myself are 3-tenths behind them. Max was cruising to the end.”
Russell also said that Austria had given them a clear direction of where the development needs to head, adding that in this route they will extract much more performance out of their car and that the period after the summer break will be ‘exciting’. Indeed, Mercedes are just 44 points behind Ferrari, who are now almost double that behind Red Bull, and this will be a very exciting prospect for fans.
Also Read: Sergio Perez stands firm, says George Russell ‘clearly’ made a mistake in Austria crash
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)