George Russell called his qualifying session for the Hungarian GP a “total disaster” after the Mercedes driver failed to make it out of Q1 in 17th place.
Russell put himself in jeopardy by being only 14th and close to the bubble when a red flag came out after Sergio Perez crashed.
When action resumed Russell was told he had fuel for three laps, to be run fast-slow-fast.
However, he completed the third lap before the chequered flag just as the track was drying, and rivals were setting their quickest laps.
He asked, “Why have we not got enough fuel in the car to complete the session, guys? The track is just getting better and better.”
Russell also apologised for not having done a quicker lap earlier in the session, saying, “It’s on me.”
He was then bumped down to an eventual 17th place. Russell admitted that he was frustrated that the team had sent him out too early for the fuel load he had.
“It was on me at the beginning,” he said when asked by this writer about the strategy mistake.
“I didn’t think it was going to rain again, so I just thought the track will get quicker. I took it easy lap one, and suddenly it starts raining.
“And that was the most important lap. But it didn’t matter. The end was the quickest, and we had no fuel in the car to finish the session. No idea how that happened. And a total disaster.”
Asked what was going through his mind at that stage he said: “Well, I was confused. I didn’t understand.”
Russell admitted that it was a wake-up call for the team after two strong recent weekends.
“You never take your eye off the ball,” he said. “We need to have a proper sit down as a team to understand what’s going on. We’ve got the car to be fighting for the top three.
“We shouldn’t be standing here out of Q1, and Lewis only just scraped through into Q3. I’m really quite angry right now, because we’ve got a such a fast car, and we can’t be throwing away opportunity like this.”
Regarding prospects for Sunday, he said: “Difficult race. We’ll still be able to come through, maybe fight for the top six, but from [P17], it’s not going to be easy.”
Team boss Toto Wolff admitted that a mistake had been made.
“That was a very disappointing qualifying session for us today,” said the Austrian. “It was a total underperformance from all of us.
“Losing a car in Q1 is clearly not acceptable. George struggled to get in a solid lap earlier in the session, and we didn’t execute the final run at all.
“That stemmed from a lack of solid communication between ourselves and the driver. We need to ensure we learn from this so that it doesn’t happen again.”
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin added: “It was a very frustrating day today. We didn’t manage the session well, and because of that, George was knocked out in Q1.
“We will review all the communications to understand how we can learn from our mistakes, but ultimately, we weren’t joined up and sent the car too early for the fuel we had in the tank.”
