WATCH: “Focus George Focus,” Toto Wolff calms down George Russell as the Briton loses P2 to Lando Norris at Canadian GP

George Russell claimed his second pole position in F1 at the Canadian GP.

WATCH: “Focus George Focus,” Toto Wolff calms down George Russell as the Briton loses P2 to Lando Norris at Canadian GP

Toto Wolff and George Russell (Via: Imago, X/SkyF1, screenshot)

Mercedes arrived at the Canadian GP weekend with a change in the suspension layout and upgrades on both of its cars. These upgrades seemed to have paid off for the Brackley-based team as George Russell claimed pole in an epic showdown on Saturday. However, this fortune did not trundle through into the race day as the Briton lost a myriad of positions after his pitstop and was thus, told by Toto Wolff to focus on his race.

George Russell clinched pole position around the 4.3-kilometer track by putting in a 1:12:000, the same time as Max Verstappen. The Englishman was ecstatic with his achievement and stated his desire to win the Candian GP. However, as the lights went out, the 26-year-old crawled on the race start and held back faster cars for quite some time, but this tactic did not play out till the end.

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Subsequently, when the drivers came in for a change to the slick tires, the Brit was in second place but lost control of his Mercedes W15 later on, costing him P2.

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Russell’s silly mistake was then later called off by Toto Wolff, who told him to keep his head down in order to focus. This order from his team supremo was hailed by the young Brit, who subsequently composed himself to claim his first podium of the season when the chequered flag fell.

George Russell admits to being slower of the Mercedes pair without the aid of Lewis Hamilton’s telemetry

Though Russell was the fastest driver on the track during qualifying, he was quite a way behind his teammate during his free practice outings. Witnessing this, he decided to hold a debrief between himself and his engineer and checked Lewis Hamilton‘s telemetry to know where the former seven-time world champion was gaining time on him.

Mercedes's drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton
George Russell and Lewis Hamilton (images via IMAGO)

The young Brit explained how his teammate’s lap data helped him extract performance out of the W15.

He was well ahead of me, and [I] had to look a lot into his data try and understand what he was doing differently. And to be honest, that helped me a huge amount ahead of this qualifying – and I’m just so glad that we could pull it off because I feel like we really deserve it for all of this hard work we’ve been putting it in, and the car has been feeling awesome this weekend.
George Russell said post qualifying

Russell claimed that Hamilton was ahead of him in the early phase of the weekend. This intrigued him to look over into the telemetry, which he admitted helped him a lot to find the limit of the car. He then further stated that the W15 has been feeling awesome reaffirming the engineers at Brackley that the upgrades are working as intended.

Despite his humongous efforts to win the race, Red Bull and Verstappen emerged victorious. This left the Mercedes duo to finish a strong P3 and P4, collecting a mega haul of points for the German marque.

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