George Russell – a star is born
Russell missed out on pole position by a smidge, but the 22-year-old couldn’t have done much more with his unexpected golden opportunity that had come to him from Hamilton’s misfortune. Fastest in both practice sessions on Friday, he’d wobbled a bit on Saturday morning, but held his nerve in qualifying to end up just 0.026 seconds slower than Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas. The Finn could feel the breath on his neck.
In the Williams this year, Russell has made the odd error in races, beyond that clanger in Imola. So how would he handle the rise in pressure at this end of the grid? The answer was emphatic. He made a peach of a start, secured the lead without drama at Turn 1 and then built a comfortable three-second cushion to Bottas. This was business as usual, as if Hamilton was still in the car – and you can’t say better than that.
How he handled himself in the lead of a grand prix for the first time, negotiated the first pitstop and stretched his advantage despite an apparent software glitch was mightily impressive. As team boss Toto Wolff put it, “a new star is born” – and like all the best F1 drivers Russell immediately looked utterly composed and natural living at the sharp end.
How it all unravelled was agonising. The horrendous pitstop foul-up from the best team on the grid, triggered by a radio problem in the garage, left Russell with Bottas’s front tyres, while the Finn was left high and dry with the same hard compound Pirellis he’d just come in on – from a stop that hadn’t even been required. So dominant were the Mercs, this was just a supposed ‘safety stop’ to get them to the end in comfort. Even double-stacked, it should have been routine. Instead, Russell was forced to return to the pits once more for the set of medium tyres he should have been given the first time. No wonder Wolff couldn’t look.
But still Russell could have won this race, putting the kerfuffle behind him to maximise his tyre advantage, first blasting past hapless Bottas struggling on his beyond-worn tyres, then Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon. Now only Perez’s Racing Point was between him and an even better victory than the one he had looked set to earn – until a cruel puncture robbed us of a gripping finish, and Russell from a dream debut for the team he’s long set his heart on joining. Even then, nurtured by the calm, measured voice of engineer Pete Bonnington, he got his head down as instructed to rise back to ninth, just behind Bottas, and score his first F1 points. Yes, it could have been so much more, but this performance was brighter and more spectacular than any of the fireworks that burst into the night sky as this unforgettable Sakhir GP finally drew to a close.
The thing is, everyone else on the grid believes they could drive just as well in the black car were they given the chance. The fact is Russell now knows he can – and so, most importantly, does Mercedes.