In his first appearance for Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton’s stand-in, Williams’ regular Russell dominated the majority race on the Bahrain international circuit, taking the lead early on.
Russell took a nearly three-second lead over Mercedes team-mate Valteri Botas in the opening period before pitting, and ran clearly for more than five seconds after getting more time despite the pit cycle.
But when the safety car was called to the pit 59, Mercedes tried to double its car into the pit, only to slow down in fitting Team Russell’s tires.
The pit crew released Russell, but found that he had accidentally put the tires for the Bottas in the British driver’s car. As a result, Botas refitted its existing hard tires before releasing.
Asked by Motorsport.com how the tires were mixed, Mercedes team principal Wolfe revealed that the radio issue did not mean Cole was next to Russell in the garage.
“What happened is that when we call the pit crew, they call on the radio and bring out the right tire,” Wolf said. Wolfe said.
“On one side of the garage, on George’s side, Pitt didn’t hear.
“We had a radio that didn’t work, and then the wrong guy with the wrong tires came out.”
Russell was forced to dig a hole in the front lane to get back on his own tires, but his investigation into running on Botas compounds is ongoing.
“We immediately found out that Voltaire did not have his tires. We knew that Voltaire’s tires were on George’s car,” Wolfe said.
“We fitted the old hard tire of the Voltaire that we just got back into the car, and we know we need to chase George again.”
Despite the issues, Russell was still in a position to win Sakhir’s race, while Puncher fought back from the fifth on a resumption with 19 times to go to the second sitting before the second.
Russell eventually finished the race ninth and then admitted that the shock was “really a bloody injury” after Mercedes came so close to his debut win.
“The slow puncher probably had to run through the line several times to get from him,” Wolfe said.
“Winning the race? I don’t know. I think our organizer said he would reach out to Sergio and DRSA would have helped us, but I’m not sure. [if he would have won].
“Sergio ran a brilliant, brilliant race, and he deserves to win the race because we made a lot of mistakes, and were unlucky from the puncture.”
