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Having made his first race with Mercedes to replace Lewis Hamilton, Russell dominated most of the race after taking the lead at the start.
Before the first few pit stops, Russell opened 3 seconds with his teammate Valtteri Bottas, and although he was 8 seconds ahead after the pits, he generally led the race with a difference of 5 seconds.
On lap 59, after Jack Aitken’s accident, the safety car was brought onto the track, while Mercedes called their drivers to the pits again for the new tire.
The pit crew mounted and sent tires to Russell’s vehicle, albeit slowly, but it all got mixed up at Bottas’ pit stop that followed. Mechanics using the front left tire noticed they were putting Bottas’ tires on Russell. Bottas then put his old tires back on and then went back to the race. At the end of his lap, Russell was called to the pits and put on the correct tires.
When asked by Motorsport.com how the mess was, Wolff said Russell’s team was not called due to the problem with the radio system so it was broke.
“When we call the pit crew, we call them (the tire hauling team) by radio and they bring the right tires for the drivers,” said Wolff.
“There was no pit call from George’s side, on one side of the garage.”
“There was a problem with the radio at the time, and when George got to the pits, the wrong men brought in the wrong tires.”
“We knew right after that pit stop that Valtteri had no tires. Valtteri’s tires were installed on George’s car.”
“We put on the hard tires that came off the Valtteri and we knew we had to stop George again.” said.
Despite the problems and the additional pit stop, Russell managed to get back up after the safety car and seemed to be fighting Sergio Perez in the final laps, but had to plow again because his left rear tire blew out.
As a result, Russell dropped to 15th place, quickly entered the points pool and finished the race in ninth place.
“The little pop was probably caused by going too offline to switch,” Wolff said.
“Could I win the race? I don’t know. I was going to catch Sergio according to our plan, and DRS would probably help us. But I’m not sure if he would definitely win.”
“Sergio had an excellent race today and he deserved to win. We made too many mistakes and we were unlucky enough to puncture the tires.” said.
