George Russell: Austrian GP “worse than I could even imagine” after "perfect storm"

George Russell said his outing in the Austrian Grand Prix was “worse than I could even imagine”, despite having already tempered his expectations going into the weekend.

Just two weeks after scoring his first Formula 1 victory of the year in Canada, Russell endured a tough race in Spielberg, as he finished more than a minute behind race winner Lando Norris in fifth place.

Not only was the Mercedes driver unable to match the pace of the leading McLarens, but he also trailed Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton by over 30 seconds.

The Briton explains that Mercedes’ lack of pace in Spielberg was down to W16 being too sensitive to high temperature, an issue the Brackley-based team has been unable to fix despite multiple attempts.

“I was expecting a bad race and it was worse than I even could imagine,” Russell told media including Crash.net. “The problems are so clear.

“Coming off the back of Canada with the win with no tyre overheating, [where] we were the quickest. But as soon as you get to a track where there's a bit of overheating, we drop off so much.

“The team have been working so hard for six months now to try and solve this issue. We've got ideas, but we're not really making major headways right now.”

Apart from the high track temperature, several other factors contributed to Mercedes having a lacklustre outing in Spielberg.

“This was a bit of a perfect storm,” he explained. The tarmac is like one of the roughest of the season. Obviously, [it is a] high-speed circuit, you go round the track many times - the most number of laps in the season.

“And then 50 degrees track temp. So it was sort of that perfect storm.”

Russell's teammate Kimi Antonelli retired on the opening lap of the race after an incident at Turn 3.