Resilience and “driving abnormally” - How George Russell got his F1 title bid back on track with Austrian GP win
George Russell demonstrated nerves of steel in a much-needed victory that was a statement to himself, as much as it was to his F1 rivals.
George Russell’s win at the Austrian Grand Prix was a statement victory that has reinvigorated his Formula 1 championship challenge after a bruising few months.
This was, in many people’s eyes, the season that Russell was destined to become F1 world champion for the first time. He was installed as the bookies’ favourite before a wheel was even turned, with Mercedes rumoured to have stolen a march on its rivals amid the world championship’s biggest regulation shake-up.
Russell made a perfect start to the campaign by winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, but a run of rotten luck, puzzling performance struggles, and the red-hot form of his younger team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli had threatened to derail the Briton’s world championship ambitions.
It would have been easy for Russell to lose hope and confidence, but he has demonstrated immense resilience with an impressive bounce back across the Austrian Grand Prix weekend that culminated in an overdue return to the top step of the podium.
Long road back to the top
Prior to standing atop of the podium in Spielberg, 112 days had passed since Russell last tasted the winners’ champagne in Melbourne. One could have forgiven Russell for forgetting what it felt like.
“It feels like a long time ago, to be honest,” the 28-year-old said. “It’s been a tough couple of months with some really tricky races, with races that felt like everything was going against me, then some races with some tough performances.
“Obviously, I’ve got a really incredible team-mate next to me, who week in, week out is delivering some pretty spectacular performances. Going into Canada, going into Barcelona from quite a low point, I needed a lot of resilience to be able to get back and deliver some strong performances.”
Russell’s performance in Austria was one of determination. A combination of some quick thinking and a “magic lap” in qualifying would tee Russell up to take the win, but converting pole position into victory would prove far from straightforward.
Having looked in control throughout the opening stint, Russell’s race became more complicated when he saw a charging Max Verstappen in his upgraded and improved Red Bull looming large in his mirrors.
Despite Verstappen eroding what had been a 10-second deficit as he hunted Russell down after the final pit stops, the Mercedes driver held his nerve to resist the four-time world champion with a performance that served as a timely reminder.
"The tough races definitely test you psychologically," Russell added. "These last two weekends for me have been vitally important to remind myself I can do it."
Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff described Russell’s display under pressure as “cold-blooded”, though Russell himself conceded it “didn’t quite feel like that”.
“It felt like a really calm and controlled race,” he stated. “I think if we took Max out of the picture, you’d say it was a really strong performance from Mercedes, 20 seconds ahead of McLaren, more ahead of Ferrari.
“But with the upgrades on the Red Bull, Max was in the fight for pole yesterday, really great race pace from him today. He pressured me in the middle stint and forced me to stop with 28 laps remaining, which was quite uncomfortable.
“But I had a really strong first 20 laps of that stint, which allowed me just to bring it home in the final eight [laps].”
Finding key answers and “driving abnormally”
Russell’s victory drought came amid a perplexing run of races in which he rarely had the answer to his team-mate Antonelli’s pace. In Japan and Miami in particular, Russell was well beaten as his team-mate racked up back-to-back wins that took him to the championship summit.
And just as things looked to be changing, bad luck struck. Russell retired from the lead in Canada with a mechanical failure, and then was hit with an unfortunate - and what would later be proved to be incorrect - double-whammy penalty in Monaco that left him point-less for two races on the spin.
Russell turned a corner to claim pole in Barcelona, but struggled for pace when it mattered most in the race and would be beaten by Lewis Hamilton, though rare misfortune for Antonelli at least meant he came away from Spain having gained some much-needed ground on his main rival.
If Barcelona was his first lucky break, then Austria was the weekend when it finally all came together again for Russell.
“I have a lot of confidence in myself, knowing I can do it. I have less confidence in being able to get everything aligned with the car, the set-up and the tyres, because it’s just been so up and down for me,” he said.
“And even this weekend, at points I was six tenths behind Kimi, and then come Q3 I was two tenths ahead. And I don’t honestly have a major answer for that.
“But those times where I managed to deliver the pole laps, the car and the tyres have felt more akin to last year, when I could deliver those performances every lap throughout a weekend. So, I’ll be working hard with my team to try and emulate that.”
A deep-dive into the data and a back-to-basics approach have paid dividends for Russell, who revealed he drove “quite abnormally” to what previously felt natural to him in order to seal the deal at the Red Bull Ring.
“The team have done a really incredible job to sort of put some real answers down [as to] why the performances were not good,” he explained.
“Monaco and Montreal were two really tough races for me, and I didn’t leave either of them looking at the data thinking, “Where is the issue?” It was clear what the problem was, and it was clear how we could maybe solve that. When we perhaps looked through some historical data, there were some trends of this, and it’s all just been exacerbated with this new car.
“So, coming into this race weekend, I think maybe my previous approach, it would have really hurt me on a track like this. And I drove the race very differently and quite abnormally, to be honest, to manage the tyres, and it worked quite well.
“I need to get this further understanding. Last year, we were eight years into that, or four years into those tyres that we were running with, and I think I really knew in my locker how to handle the tyres at hot tracks, cold tracks, smooth surfaces, rough surfaces. And this year, I don’t, to be honest.
“So I’m rebuilding that. But yeah, the team has done a great job to sort of steer me in the right direction.”
Title fight is back on for Russell
The result saw Russell reclaim second place in the championship and cut the gap to Antonelli down to 40 points with at least 14 races remaining.
Russell has home comforts to come with the British Grand Prix up next. So does he feel like the title is back on?
“I mean, every lap he [Antonelli] does, he’s in the top two of the leaderboard. That was me at the start of the year, and there hasn’t been recently,” Russell responded when asked that very question.
“Barcelona was a real breeze for me because it was just clicking every single lap. But here it was a real fight. But getting that pole position, getting the win today, I know I am capable of doing it and I always believed that in the years gone by.
“This year I never doubted my ability, I just doubted maybe the process, and I needed to get on top of that. And I’ve just seen it so clearly, looking at how Lewis has bounced back this year, looking at [Charles] Leclerc, who’s one of the best qualifiers on the grid, how he struggled so much this year.
“We haven’t just forgotten how to drive or relearn how to drive. It’s just us understanding and getting on top of the package. And I definitely feel every lap, every race I’m doing, I’m making some really good gains in that regard. So yeah, I’m feeling good.”
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