Russell: Williams could have led, finished 7th in Germany

George Russell believes he could have led the German Grand Prix and finished the race seventh for Williams had he been more forceful when asking to move onto slick tyres.

Russell narrowly missed out on his first F1 point after a mistake in the final stint allowed teammate Robert Kubica to pass him, with the Pole being promoted into P10 after both Alfa Romeos were hit with a post-race penalty.

Speaking in Hungary on Thursday, Russell revealed he had wanted to follow Lance Stroll’s strategy and be one of the first drivers to switch to slick tyres, only to make the switch a few laps too late.

“It sort of felt like it summed up our weekend as a whole,” Russell said when asked by Crash.net if seeing Kubica score a point added to his disappointment at all.

“Regardless of results, we come away from a weekend either being satisfied knowing we got the most out of it, but Germany was definitely the least satisfying weekend by a long way, with regards to everything as a whole, not just the race.

“It was probably more disappointing at the time, feeling like we missed out on even more points. I wanted to box under the penultimate Safety Car, but I wasn’t quite forceful enough on the radio.

“This was when I was ahead of Lance, who obviously went on to lead the race at some point. That would have been me, because I was ahead of him. I think we worked out we could have finished seventh.

“After looking at all of the information the team had at the time, knowing the rain was very intermittent, they made the best decision with all of the information they had at the time, and we also have to consider the risk for reward.

“We felt like it was a huge risk, we felt like regardless with our pace we would have gone backwards, and we would have potentially been throwing the car at the wall with a set of aero items we’d like to keep on the car for a couple of races to come.”

Asked if he had held back in his driving to avoid damaging the car, Russell said: “No, it wasn’t in the back of my mind. I was just driving flat out from start to finish.

“But I’m sure when it comes to a risky strategy decision such as that, seeing the likes of Lewis [Hamilton] and Charles [Leclerc] going off in those conditions, like I said, we just had to weigh up the risk and reward.”