George Russell believes he would have finished at least second in the Sao Paulo GP had Mercedes not disagreed with him and called him in for a tyre change under the VSC.
Russell referenced the successful tyre strategy that he called from the cockpit at the Belgian GP, noting that “sometimes you have to trust your gut.”
Russell was in the lead ahead of Lando Norris when the VSC intervention prompted multiple teams to call their drivers in for a fresh set of intermediates. He challenged with the decision, having suggested that a red flag was inevitable, but he was obliged to go along with it.
However Esteban Ocon, Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly all stayed out and moved into the top three places.
When a red flag was called for shortly afterwards all three benefited from a free tyre change, and then went on to finish in the top three places.
Russell made his frustration clear on the radio, saying “I said it! We should have stayed out.”
He eventually finished fourth on the tail of Gasly as the best-placed driver to stop and change tyres under racing conditions.
“If we stayed out, we would have been we’d have been first at the restart, ahead of Ocon and Max and Gasly,” he said. “And leading from the front is much easier. Where we could have ended up, I don’t know. But I was pretty, pretty angry at the time, because I wanted to stay out.”
Russell was adamant that his preference to stay out was the correct one.
“From the team’s perspective it’s not obvious at all,” he said of the decision to pit. “From the cockpit it was very clear it was going to be a red flag or safety car, because the conditions were undriveable.
“The rain was not easing, and I could see the big black cloud above me. And then I had Shov [Andrew Shovlin] jump on, like overruling my engineer to say box.
“We’re working as a team. We’re trying to make the best decisions in the time. Clearly, the guys who didn’t pit, they finished one-two-three, and we finished the highest of the drivers who did so. I would take a small slice of satisfaction from that.”
Elaborating on the debate over the radio he said: “It was box, I said stay out, it was box again, it was stay out. They said box again, and as I said, I wanted to stay out. And then the last one, you’ve got to go for it.
“Sometimes you have to trust your gut. Last time I trusted my gut, it went down pretty well.
“Today who knows if we could have won the race, but if we didn’t pit, we would have been leading at the restart, and the first 30 laps, controlling the pace with Lando behind, we had very good straight line speed as well. P2 would have been a minimum.
“If we stayed out, we would have been we’d have been first at the restart, ahead of Ocon and Max and Gasly And leading from the front is much easier.
“Where we could have ended up, I don’t know. But I was pretty angry at the time, because I wanted to stay out.”
