George Russell said he had been expecting Mercedes to run a three-stop strategy in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, but was told he would only make two stops.
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Russell led the early stages of the race ahead of Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton, running a three-stop plan, took the lead by making his final tyre change during a Virtual Safety Car period.
Russell acknowledged the VSC helped Hamilton, but believed the Ferrari driver was quick enough to overtake even without that interruption. “Lewis probably would have come back through anyway,” he told Sky, “but without the Virtual Safety Car he would have pitted behind us and who knows what would have happened.”
Running a two-stop strategy left Russell vulnerable in the closing phases. He said he struggled during the latter parts of his longer stints and was overtaken by Andrea Kimi Antonelli shortly before the finish; Antonelli then retired with a technical problem moments later.
“I was just struggling towards the end of the stints,” Russell said. “I need to review why that was.”
He explained that he had expected to run three stops as well. “In the first stint I felt very comfortable on the medium tyre. I felt we pitted really early. Lewis committed to a three-stop, I think we should have committed to our own strategy,” he said.
Russell added that he had been managing tyre life and maintaining a gap to Hamilton early on, and that at one point he thought Mercedes had switched him to a three-stop plan. “Then I thought we actually went and converted to a three [stop strategy] when they told me we were staying on the two. That was a challenge.”
He believes a three-stop approach would have suited him better given his late-stint difficulties. “On my side, it was not straightforward at all. To be honest, I think the three-stop probably would have suited my style a little bit better because I was struggling a lot towards the end of the stints,” Russell said.
Despite the frustration, he took positives from the weekend: “I’ll just take the positives away: it was a clean Friday, clean Saturday, and I came away with 18 points, which is 18 more than I’ve done in the last two races.”
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