Monaco Grand Prix – Williams’ George Russell finished P15 in Monte Carlo, having been able to get involved in some of the lower midfield scrapping during the race.
The Williams rookie was one of the drivers to make use of the early Safety Car when he pitted at the end of Lap 10 to swap to the Hard tyre. Emerging at the back of the field, he was right alongside his teammate Robert Kubica when the Polish driver was tagged and spun at La Rascasse. Russell avoided getting caught up with it and was able to pull clear.
Later in the race, with Kimi Raikkonen’s pace causing the lower midfield to bunch up, Russell was able to latch onto the back of that train and eventually wound up coming home in P15 and 15 seconds behind the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg.
“I think the early stop worked out really well for us.” said Russell. “I think it could have gone even better though – I think one of the guys was bunching everyone else up in the pack and holding everyone up. There was one point where we thought I was going to end up ahead of Carlos Sainz in P6!”
“From my side, I was very happy with the race. We weren’t really fighting for anything in the second half of the race but i wanted to treat it like we were. I have to test myself and put it on the limit so, when the time comes, I’ll know what to expect. Our times out there were pretty decent.”
Asked whether he thought Williams had overperformed on his side of the garage, he said: “I don’t want to say overperformed, but we maximised the job and it was great to get so many laps under my belt pushing the limits. At one point, my engineer got on the radio and said I was lapping the same pace of the leader! I was like: ‘Whats going on here?!” I assume they had an issue or something but I was really happy with that.”
