One man’s joy is another man’s sorrow: While Lewis Hamilton took his first Formula 1 victory since 2021 and the second Mercedes triumph in a row at his home race in Silverstone, his teammate George Russell came away empty-handed. The pole-setter had to park his W15 in the pits early after 33 of 52 race laps due to a water leak.
“It’s a real blow,” said Russell, unsurprisingly disappointed after his retirement. “Not being able to finish any race is disappointing, let alone at your home race when you had the car to win.” On the lap of his retirement, Russell was in fourth place, around 13 seconds behind the leader Lando Norris.
Toto Wolff disappointed: They let him down
Russell initially defended his lead at the start and then slowly pulled away from the rest of the field together with second-placed Hamilton. “At the beginning in the dry everything was under control,” said Russell. But when it started to rain, Russell lost ground. On lap 18, Hamilton passed in Stowe.
Russell suffers from double pit stop
When both Hamilton and Russell went off the track in turn 1 on the following lap, Russell also had to give up P2 to Norris. On lap 20, Oscar Piastri in the second McLaren finally passed both Mercedes drivers. “McLaren was super-fast in this period,” Russell said appreciatively. “It was difficult, but I wasn’t too nervous because I knew the race would be long.”
From there, however, the race didn’t last much longer for Russell. Shortly afterwards, the Briton said he encountered problems: “We were still fighting, but ten laps before the failure (lap 23; ed.) I knew I had problems. I lost power and then the water failure came, there was no more water flowing to the engine.”
But even before the retirement, things weren’t going entirely ideally for Russell. He did regain position against Piastri in the pits, as McLaren, unlike Mercedes, decided not to make a double stop. However, this double stop meant a loss of time for Russell, as he was only around two seconds behind Hamilton before switching to intermediates on lap 27.
Russell praises Mercedes performance: It’s incredible
As a result, Russell lost third place to Max Verstappen. In the meantime, Russell was able to reduce the gap to the world champion from around 3.5 seconds to around 1.5 seconds, until this gap increased significantly again on the last lap before the retirement.
Despite the ultimately disappointing result, Russell was at least able to take something out of the race. “It’s incredible,” said the 26-year-old, referring to the Mercedes performance. “Under normal driving conditions, we had the car to be first and second. We are definitely back and will be fighting for race wins more often from now on!”
In Silverstone, McLaren and Mercedes were once again fighting for the Formula 1 race win. But once again it was not enough for the traditional team from Woking to secure its second win of the season. After a strategic mistake in the final sprint, Lando Norris was disappointed. You can read all the details here: