Fresh from winning an ultra-competitive 2018 Formula 2 championship, Mercedes prospect George Russell had to endure 60 grands prix of toil and hard graft for Williams before joining the factory team alongside the sport’s most successful ever driver in 2022.
But no matter how brave a face has put on over his first 29 months as a Mercedes driver, Russell would never have expected his first 55 rounds racing for the multiple world champions to yield just a solitary victory.
Returning to the Red Bull Ring for round 11 of the 2024 season, Mercedes were also marking a year since McLaren demoted them to being the second-fastest Mercedes-powered team on the grid. And though Mercedes and Ferrari have whittled down much of Red Bull’s advantage over them across the previous season, McLaren remain ahead of them both. Now, McLaren are the ones who share top billing for each grand prix with Max Verstappen, with Mercedes still only playing a supporting role at best.
A week prior in Barcelona, Russell had enjoyed a brief cameo appearance out front by sweeping by Verstappen and Lando Norris at the start. But two laps in the lead were all he got before Verstappen wrested the spotlight away from him. This time, Russell was again on the second row behind the two championship leaders, only one place higher on the grid in third, thanks to Oscar Piastri’s penalty for exceeding track limits.
Saturday’s sprint race suggested McLaren could fight the world champion – but that winning that fight might be beyond them. Especially around a circuit that has been a Verstappen stronghold for so many seasons.
Hotter temperatures on Sunday than earlier in the weekend would only add to the challenge of keeping the softest suite of tyre compounds alive through the race. So it was no surprise when all the 19 cars starting from the grid fitted mediums for the start, only Zhou Guanyu starting on hards from the pit lane.
Verstappen had successfully repelled both McLarens at the start of the sprint race and the grand prix was no different. Almost as if to test drivers’ discipline under the recently rewritten jump start rules, the five lights on the starting gantry were held for almost four seconds before the race finally began. When it did, Verstappen left the grid cleanly with Norris unable to put him under any kind of pressure on the run to the first right-hander. Russell tried to look to the outside of the McLaren…
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