"He really wanted it" – understanding Russell's rage over aborted ‘pole' lap in Brazil

Events of the past few weeks have left George Russell ruined, if only temporarily. That much was obvious long before the tetchy radio exchange that followed an instruction to abort his final qualifying lap for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

"I probably just feel a bit exhausted this season of constantly picking myself back up," he said on Thursday.

"When you get kicked to the ground you pick yourself back up, then you get kicked down again, you pick yourself back up. I was hoping to do that maybe twice in the season, not every other weekend."

Taking his sixth internal combustion engine this season entails a five-place grid drop for Russell, but he clearly had his heart set on making a point by going quickest in what proved to be a convoluted qualifying session at Interlagos. Heavy rain prompted a red flag a little over two minutes into Q1, and there followed a lengthy stoppage as the various protagonists considered their life choices, punctuated by Bernd Maylander essaying occasional laps in the safety car to adjudicate on conditions.

It would have been possible to squeeze in one of those straight-to-video Chuck Norris action movies Cannon used to specialise in during the 1980s during the interregnum before the action resumed. Q1 and Q2 were harem-scarum affairs, predominantly transacted on Pirelli's rarely seen ‘extreme' wet tyre before a window briefly opened for intermediates in the final minutes of Q2.

Q3 then got underway after another delay, since Rafael Camara's Haas needed to be removed and sundry debris cleared after he smote the barrier at Juncao, scene of 2008's memorable "IS THAT GLOCK?" This proved crucial as more heavy rain was in the offing, making the opening minutes of Q3 crucial.

Russell was just one of several drivers facing grid drops, albeit comparatively mild in his case compared with both Ferraris and Max Verstappen. For him, though, setting P1 in Q3 after a disappointing championship campaign was clearly important to Russell.

Russell did set a lap which was good enough for provisional pole, 1m27.674s, but was instructed by race engineer Marcus Dudley to have another crack before the weather window closed.

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

"Push if you can, I think we'll get one more lap before this rain."

As he did so, Lando Norris was opening a lap which would ultimately be good for pole: 1m27.40s. On Russell's second push lap he came across Alex Albon's Williams in the tail end of the second sector, enough for him to harrumph, "Move Albono!" over the radio.

 "So, we will get one more lap here," Dudley tried to reassure him.

"You need to tell me, mate, what I'm doing, if I'm backing or going."

"We can back up now, back up now."

"Are you sure?"

"It's raining heavier now."

Having backed off, and as the rain intensified, Russell raged:  "I should have f***ing finished the lap. You f***ing told me to back off. What the hell?"

At this point, team boss Toto Wolff felt the need to stage an intervention.

"George, you're P2."

"I don't want to be P2, I want to be P1. That was a P1 lap. F***ing hell."

What will have hurt even more is that within seconds of Russell obeying the instruction to back off, Norris crossed the line to better Russell's previous lap by 0.204s.

"It was a 50/50 call," said Wolff later. "He was 18 milliseconds up on Norris at that stage, he was running into Albon, so I don't think it would have been enough for pole. But obviously he's driven perfectly in all the sessions, so he merited to be on pole."

"He really wanted it, even though he knew there was the penalty, he just wanted it."

Does the data back up this assertion? Actually, it does.

Russell (light blue trace) eked out a small advantage over Norris (orange trace) through the first sector

Photo by: GP-Tempo

Advantage Russell in sector one

McLaren's shorter gear ratios always provide an interesting contrast on the straights, and at the opening of the lap Norris was in top gear while Russell remained in seventh. Still, Russell enjoyed a marginal speed advantage as they reached terminal velocity, and lifted off the throttle later into Turn 1. Usually it's Norris who blends throttle and brake more tightly, but here it was Russell, and the apex-speed offset enabled Russell to open his book around a tenth of a second up. He was later off the brakes, but more assertive on the throttle between Turns 1 and 2.

The assertiveness on the loud pedal tells you how much he wanted it. Norris was neater through Turn 2, enabling him to bring the gap back to within the order of a tenth before a feathering of the throttle to correct a slide cost him momentum. That translated into Russell getting better momentum onto the straight towards Descida do Lago before the McLaren attained a slightly higher top speed, perhaps as a result of a slightly different electrical deployment. They ended the sector less than two tenths apart, with Russell ahead.

Russell was still fractionally up when he backed out of the lap - but with Albon ahead, he would have struggled to retain his advantage to the flag

Photo by: GP-Tempo

Game over at the end of sector two

It's a long second sector at Interlagos, with some of the tightest corners. As their apex speeds converged at Descida do Lago, Norris was able to get on the throttle fractionally earlier before having to feather, while Russell was able to take a more linear path to full throttle before having a smaller lift through Turn 5 on the approach to Ferrodura, where it's easier to overcommit and get dragged wide. It was here where Albon appeared in Russell's sights, although the Williams wasn't dawdling: Albon was doing his best to wring a decent lap out of the recalcitrant FW48 so it was a case of waving, not drowning.

Norris's top speed built to a peak of around 13km/h quicker than the Mercedes here, again suggesting a disparity in deployment strategy. And although their speeds converged again towards the apex, Norris had the confidence to stick it out around Laranjinha, eking out a fraction of speed before having to feather again to correct a slide which brought their cornering speeds to a similar peak before the harder right at Esse. By the approach to Pinheirinho, as Russell was urging Albon to get out of the way, the gap was in the noise of 0.010s.

They remained evenly matched towards Bico de Pato – Turn 10 to the younger drivers – where Russell received the instruction to back off. At that point he was still, as Wolff pointed out, 18 milliseconds up on Norris. Before he obeyed the instruction, though, Russell got a better run out of the corner and was actually beginning to expand the gap to Norris's lap before he backed off. The abrupt throttle lift on the run to Mergulho signalled the end of his lap.

"They've got the weather forecast in front of them and I don't," said Russell afterwards.

"And, you know, this is where you need that trust and you're relying on one another. Obviously, it was the wrong decision, and it was a decision that I think as soon as it was made, I think we knew it was the wrong one because already they could feel the rain pouring harder.

"So, we need to understand… we're relying on a lot of systems, and we can't point the finger at somebody. We need to understand why we made that decision and whether our systems were telling us what we needed to know, because you're relying on the radar.

"But it doesn't make it any less frustrating for me, and it's not my engineer's fault. He's relaying information. He's ultimately the one who passes the message on, but he's got 12 people talking to him, giving him that information to relay on. So, we just need to understand why we made that decision."

Quibbling about whether it was right to back off at that point, in the belief that it would be possible to get another lap in before the rain intensified, seems wrongheaded when you review the onboards and see how close Russell was to Albon through Bico de Pato. To have completed his lap on the same pace he would have required some co-operation from the Williams driver between Mergulho and Juncao. Given how many drivers had slithered off at the latter corner, this would have been perilous indeed.

"There's no point for pole, but it would have just been a nice little one to add to the tally," said Russell. Given his five-place grid penalty, this really is a case of tilting at windmills.