George Russell explains unusual pit lane blunder during Brazil GP

George Russell ended the Brazilian Grand Prix with a top-five finish, but his race to get to the chequered flag was anything but smooth.

The British driver started the race from seventh place and spent the majority of the race running towards the front. However, a major error when switching from Intermediate tyres to slick Soft tyres nearly ended his race completely.

Immediately after switching to the Soft tyres, and whilst leaving his grid box, Russell managed to spin in the pit lane, but was not able to completely spin 360 degrees, so he had to maneuver his car in the pit lane to continue the race.

After correcting his mistake, Russell went on to finish the Grand Prix in fourth place.

When asked if his spin was caused by cold tyres, Russell said, “It was, I'm not too sure what happened there. 

“And I couldn't do the full 360; I had had no boost, so just some of the quarks of this power unit, but you know, the main thing from today is we got the constructors' championship.

“A huge amount of work from all of the team to achieve that. Obviously, we would have liked to have done it a bit more in style, but we got it over the line, which was the most important.”

In recent races, Russell has been outperformed by his teammate, Kimi Antonelli, who won the Drivers' title last time out in Mexico.

However, in Brazil, Russell was the lead Mercedes driver and admitted that he is starting to feel ‘a bit more like myself again’ ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

He stated, “I had really strong pace in the race, especially on the soft tyre. We both struggled on the intermediate at the end, and that was quite strange.

“But yeah, feeling a bit more like myself again, but this weekend I think there was definitely pure pace there. Last weekend in Mexico, it was sort of just one lap at the right time. But looking forward to Vegas, a track where I've tended to do well.”