George Russell accepted his share of the blame for failing to reach the second round of qualifying at the Hungaroring.
However he said his Mercedes team also made a “fundamental” error by failing to ensure he had enough fuel to complete his run at the end of Q1.
The session was affected by light rain throughout and disrupted by Sergio Perez’s crash which caused a stoppage. When it resumed Russell was only 14th and immediately took to the track in a bid to improve his time in order to avoid elimination if others also went faster.
Russell was able to improve his time initially, though as the track continued to dry out the last drivers to run clearly stood at an advantage. To the Mercedes driver’s frustration, before the clock ran down he was summoned into the pits as he ran too low on fuel.
The driver accepted his responsibility for the problem, but also admitted the team had made a basic error.
“There’s two factors,” he told Sky after qualifying. “I didn’t do a good enough job at the beginning, and that was why I was down in P15.
“Then the next one was we put new tyres on at the end and we didn’t have enough fuel to complete the session. I was on track when it was wettest and when it was dry I had no fuel.
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“So it was a disaster from both aspects. We should have got through comfortably on that last lap but we had no fuel. So as I said, that was on me for being in the position in the first place.”
He said the team will review the error which ensured his early elimination. “It was not at our usual standard, for sure,” he said. “We need to go through it. I need to understand what happened on my side at the beginning, but having enough fuel for the whole session is a fundamental. So we, as a team, we made a big error.”
Russell’s misfortune meant he failed to reach Q2 for the second year in a row at the Hungaroring.
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2024 Hungarian Grand Prix
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