George Russell apologises to Williams…three times

George Russell apologised to Williams three separate times in his interview after going off into the gravel at the Styrian Grand Prix.

The Briton made Q2 for the first time in his F1 career at the Styrian Grand Prix, qualifying P12 in the heavy rain, before starting P11 due to a penalty for Charles Leclerc.

The race would prove to be not quite so kind to Russell though after he made a mistake in the early stages, causing him to go into the gravel trap and fall to the back of the pack.

Onboard of George Russell going off into the gravel.

George's comment: "I was trying to hold the position on the outside of Turn 6 and just completely lost it. There was no grip out there"#F1 #AustrianGP ?? #GR63 #WeAreWilliams pic.twitter.com/LdljPokNJe

— Has George Russell scored points in F1 yet? (@HasRussellScore) July 12, 2020

From there he and team-mate Nicholas Latifi became detached from the rest of the drivers in scenes reminiscent of last year, before Russell crossed the line in P16 ahead of his team-mate only.

And he was keen to apologise to Williams for his error.

“Firstly apologies to the team,” said Russell.

“I completely messed that up at the start.

“Made a good start, maintained the position, I was just trying to hold position around the outside of Turn 6 and completely lost it.

“There was no grip out there, apologies to the team and I will bounce back next week.”

But asked whether he thought the pace was there for a much better result, Russell said that wasn’t the case.

In fact, he said Williams’ prediction that their race pace was better than their quali pace hasn’t come to fruition at all.

“Not a huge amount to be honest,” he said.

“Our pace was particularly slow today and has been now for two weeks in a row.

“Coming into the two race weekends we thought our race pace would be stronger than our quali pace but it has absolutely turned out to be the opposite way.

“So we need to understand that and improve.

“Like I say, hands up and apologies to the team.”

Latifi said he felt that his second F1 race around the Red Bull Ring was an improvement on the first, but like Russell was hoping for more pace.

“It was a tough one, but overall, I thought I did a much better job in terms of the driving and I felt more comfortable behind the wheel,” he told the Williams website.

“Today I had to fight a few cars, most of the fighting was with George, but that was nice to experience a bit of that consistently.

“We were lacking more pace than we thought coming into the race, so it was a shame we couldn’t fight more.”

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