Russell drove “too cautiously” in first lap F1 battle with Hamilton

Russell started second, but after giving space to Hamilton he emerged from the opening sequence of corners on the first lap in fourth place, a position he still held at the end of the race.

Russell admitted that recent frustrations, including his first corner collision with Carlos Sainz in Austin, encouraged him to take a careful approach, especially when battling with his team-mate.

“I knew I wouldn’t have been able to overtake Max [Verstappen] on the outside,” said Russell when asked by Motorsport.com about his first lap. “But having Lewis on the inside I didn’t want to be too aggressive, obviously him being my team-mate.

“And ultimately that that cost me and caused me to lose two positions. So ultimately if I had managed to maintain position, I probably would have finished second today.”

Asked if he would have given the same space to anyone other than his team-mate, Russell said: “Yeah, I think it was more in Turn 1 to be honest, I would have ordinarily just chopped across or in Turn 2 I would have run the driver wide.

“So yeah, that’s the way the game works sometimes. I’d like to think it would have been the same had it been the other way around. Maybe, maybe not, I’m not too sure.

“But I’ve had a bit of a scrappy last three races on my behalf, too many incidents, too many mistakes. And that was probably a factor of taking it too cautiously. And there’s a balance in there somewhere.”

Russell admitted to some frustration about the strategy he ran in Mexico. Early in the race he indicated that he wanted to run long on his opening set of mediums and then switch to softs, a choice used very successfully by Daniel Ricciardo. However, not long after that message he mirrored Hamilton’s strategy by going to hards.

“Lots of positives to take away from the weekend,” he said. “It would have also been interesting to see how we performed had we started on the soft and gone to the medium, or even if we extended the medium and went to the soft at the end. That was what I was pushing for in the car. Everything’s easier in hindsight.”

Expanding on the strategy choice, he said: “There was no real thought about starting on the soft, but there was definitely a thought of extending the medium, and going into the soft.

“I’m not too sure, I think we reacted to [Nicholas] Latifi and Lewis, they both put the hard on and were setting green sectors…