George Russell was left furious after Mercedes ignored
his prediction that a red flag in Sao Paulo was imminent in a decision that
sent him down the order.
With Russell leading the race, he told his race engineer
Marcus Dudley that he did not want to pit as he believed a red flag was on its
way but the team overruled him and cost him track position.
Mercedes explain George Russell Brazil strategy blunder
Having qualified P2, Russell did well to get ahead of
Lando Norris into Turn 1 and was still leading by the time the rain began to
fall on Lap 28.
But even with the track conditions getting worse, Russell
told his team not to pit as he believed it was a matter of when, not if the red
flag came out. Ultimately though, Mercedes overruled him with both Russell and
Norris heading into the pits allowing Esteban Ocon, Max Verstappen and Pierre
Gasly to be in the top three when the red flag came four laps later.
Russell was left furious at the strategy blunder, telling
his engineer that he “f**king said” and trackside engineering director Andrew
Shovlin has now explained why Mercedes made that call.
He said: “I think with hindsight, you would manage most
races differently. But certainly, in this case, we would have done. One of the
key things is once they announced that the VSC was ending, we had a very, very
short window, only a second or two, where we could have got George to stay out
on track.
“The reason you would have done that is by that point,
you are going to suffer a full pit loss anyway. You may as well stay out and
just gamble on the fact that it was quite likely someone would have a crash, as
happened, and that they are forced to red flag it.
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“Prior to that, stopping to us made sense, because given
that Lando was coming in, George was able to do that. He would have still been
ahead of all those cars that stayed out. But you get the benefit of fresh
rubber in case they do not call it as a red flag.
“Normally, we try not to assume that there is going to be
a red flag, because sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong.
“If there is a safety car and you decide to stay out, assuming a red flag, if you do not get it, you are in trouble. But obviously, the cars that did stay out, that gamble worked for them, and they ended up in prime position.”
