Adam Cooper F1

George Russell admits he was “expecting a crash” with Max Verstappen at the start of the Qatar GP given how motivated the Dutchman was after losing pole to a grid penalty.

In the end Russell didn’t have a good start, and Verstappen was able to get past the Mercedes driver and claim the lead, with Lando Norris also following him through.

Russell then had a slow first pit stop, and he subsequently picked up a penalty for failing to maintain his distance behind the safety car.

However he still managed to salvage fourth place on a day when many others also had issues.

Russell admitted that he was confused by a “strange” change in form over the course of the weekend.

“I think P4 is probably a flattering result considering how the race went,” he said when asked by this writer about the result. “Funny how this sport changes. Everything was great on Friday, Saturday was a great day, and then we had no pace today.

“At best, we were two or three tenths behind Max and Lando. The start was bad, had a slow pit stop, a penalty, I don’t even know what for, to be honest. So, yeah, it’s strange.”

Russell knew that Verstappen would be on a mission at the start after being so frustrated by his one-place penalty for driving excessively slowly.

“Yeah, to be honest, I was expecting a crash, but ultimately we made it easy for him, because both Lewis and I made terrible starts,” he said.

“So it was a pretty simple overtake for him, which was a bit frustrating for us. But it’s strange how when things are working and the car is quick, everything seems just to work so well, and when the car is off the pace a bit, everything just seems to go wrong. And today was a great example of that.”

He added: “We know Max is a fighter and is aggressive. I expect no difference. I really wanted to go out there and fight with him today, like we could have done in the sprint.

“But yesterday in the sprint, he was probably two or three-tenths behind us. Today, we were two or three tenths behind him.

“And it just goes to show what a night can do in this sport. It’s always on a knife’s edge. It’s a shame we didn’t have the pace when it mattered.”

Max Verstappen says he has lost respect for George Russell after the Mercedes driver successfully argued for his rival to get a grid penalty in Qatar.

Russell came across a slow-moving Verstappen late in Q3, and highlighted his frustrations on the radio.

He continued on that theme at the subsequent hearing, where Verstappen was found guilty of driving excessively slowly and docked one place, which handed pole to Russell.

“I couldn’t believe that I got it,” the Dutchman said of the penalty. “But in a way, I was also like, yeah, I’m not surprised anymore in the world that I live in. So, you’re not happy with it.

“But at one point or another, you have to just turn the page. But it wasn’t very enjoyable to see that happen, because I think that’s the first time that in a slow lap someone has been penalised.

“While actually, I just tried to be nice. So maybe I shouldn’t be nice. But the thing is that well, being nice, because at the end of the season, everything is more or less decided, for me especially, I didn’t want to screw anyone over to prepare their lap.

“And by doing that, being nice, basically you get a penalty. And that’s what I tried to explain as well. But I just felt like I was talking to a brick wall. So there’s not much that was possible for whatever reason.”

He added: “I think I really spoke about valid reasons of what happened and it was clear cut that around me there were different scenarios going on as well, with people having colder tyres and stuff so they had to push anyway, and I didn’t want to then cause a scene into a last corner. and then no one had a lap. So very, very surprising.”

Verstappen made his thoughts about Russell clear.

“I was quite surprised when sitting there in the stewards’ room, what was all going on. Honestly, very disappointing because I think we’re all here, we respect each other a lot.

“And of course, I’ve been in that meeting room many times in my life, in my career with people that I’ve raced, and I’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard. And that for me… I lost all respect.”

Verstappen got his revenge by passing Russell at the start and going on to win the race in dominant fashion, having been chased by Lando Norris until the McLaren driver landed a penalty/.

“It’s never straightforward,” he said. “I think in the first stint as well, with Lando being there, honestly, I think the gap has been between 1.6 and 1.9 seconds, the whole stint, and you can’t afford to make a mistake.

“And he didn’t, I didn’t, and we were just pushing flat out at one point. And it was honestly really enjoyable to drive because, of course, most of the races that we do, the tyres deg and you have to manage a lot. It felt like here you could push a bit harder and the track as well, the layout, I enjoy a lot.

“The grip is very good on the track. So yeah, that was a great stint. The second stint was a bit more stop-start with the safety cars involved and then of course the temperature as well in the tyres was very tricky, because my middle restart wasn’t particularly great.

“I tried something else, but the tyres basically were too cold, so I just kept on sliding and having no traction. So that was not ideal.

“Besides that, the pace was good. A dry race like this for us has been a long time, so I’m very happy with the improvements that we made compared to the start of the weekend.”

Verstappen was pleased to see the RB20 return to winning form in normal conditions.

“The last few races in the dry, we haven’t been particularly strong on managing the tyres,” he said.

“And that’s why I was a little bit careful after qualifying. But yeah, it’s been nice. I mean, it’s still not where I would like it to be in terms of the behaviour of the car compared to, let’s say, last year.

“But at least now we are back in a fight to win races. So if we can just learn from this year’s car, take the positives, of course, from also last year and try to build a better car, I’m sure that we can be again very competitive next year.”

Charles Leclerc admits that his second place finish in the Qatar GP came as a surprise and that his Ferrari team was “lucky” to get such a result at a track where McLaren had superior pace.

Leclerc was running fourth when he jumped Oscar Piastri around the safety car pit sequence, and later he moved up a place when Lando Norris had to take a stop and go penalty.

Team mate Carlos Sainz finished sixth after being hampered by a puncture, but the result kept the team firmly in contention for the constructors’ title.

Leclerc admitted that the team had exceeded its own expectations.

“Yes, we did, because to be honest, we knew that it would be very difficult pace-wise,” he said.

“We expected McLaren to be very strong in terms of race pace. We maybe did not expect Max to be that strong, but he was super strong today.

“However, finishing second after such a weekend, where the track characteristics are very far off from the optimal of the track characteristics we need for our car, is a surprise.

“We got a little bit lucky, obviously, on my side. A bit unlucky with Carlos and his puncture. But as a team, it’s been a positive weekend.

“So yes, we exceeded our expectations because coming into the weekend, I kind of expected to lose a bit of points compared to McLaren here. However, we recovered some, so that’s good.”

Leclerc indicated that the team got the maximum out of the package it had.

“I felt like we optimised yesterday and today,” he said. “We knew that it wasn’t going to be our strongest weekend, but we decided to just focus on ourselves, and try to do what was the best possible result for us.

“And I think we achieved that very well. We should be happy. Then we of course need to look at what we can do in the future to be faster on those kind of tracks. But yeah, this weekend we did work very well as a team.”

The only negative was that he lost the used of his drinks bottle before the start.

“I did not drink, but I honestly, I don’t think it was that much of an issue for this race. Last year it would have been a really, really big issue.

“I think I wouldn’t have finished the race without my drink, but this year it was actually pretty, pretty chill.

“So yeah, in terms of dehydration, it wasn’t bad, but it was quite physical in the corners just because we had no saving to do today.

“There was basically no saving. It was just flat out pushing from the first lap to the last lap, which is quite enjoyable as a driver. I don’t think any of us drivers had our heads straight in the fast corners at the end of the race. It was very physical.”

Leclerc remains positive about the team’s prospects at the Abu Dhabi finale.
 
“To be honest, I haven’t even seen the numbers yet. So we’ve got to wait and see. But I feel like on paper, it should be a bit more positive than Qatar was.

“Again, today we’ve been quite lucky, but without what happened to Lando, we would have been very, very far off. And without the Safety Car, we would have been very far off. In terms of race pace, we weren’t fast.

“Abu Dhabi should be better for us. We’ll wait and see. But it’s not too many points between us. So we’ve just got to focus on ourselves and try to maximise everything. And hopefully we’ll bring back the title to Maranello.”

Lando Norris has apologised to his McLaren Formula 1  team for his costly penalty in the Qatar GP – while also insisting that he’s “not an idiot” and was unaware of the double yellow flag situation.

Norris was caught out when a mirror fell off Alex Albon’s Williams and lay on the track at the approach to the first corner.

Initially the yellows flashed on and off, but they were showing when leader Max Verstappen and Norris passed through.

The Red Bull driver slowed, and having seen that his rival had closed the gap he immediately reported him over the radio.

After an FIA investigation Norris subsequently received a 10 second stop-and-go penalty, which initially dropped him out of the points.

He recovered to 10^th place while also picking up the fastest lap bonus.

“Disappointed of course,” he said when asked by this writer for his thoughts on the penalty.

“I’ve let the team down. The team gave me a great car today, easily the quickest out there, and I fucked it up.

“I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m not an idiot, if there’s yellow flag, I know I need to slow down. That’s rule number one you learn in go-karts.

“But for some reason, I didn’t do that today, because I’ve not seen it, or I’ve missed it or something.

“So I have to take it on the chin. They think I’ve done something wrong. I must have done something wrong, and I can only apologise for the rest of the year to the team.”

Asked if he thought the penalty was too hard Norris acknowledged that it was standard for a double waved yellows offence.

“No, it’s fair,” he said. “If I did what they said I did wrong, then good on them for giving the correct penalty.”

When I informed him that Verstappen had reported the offence he said: “Good on him, that’s what everyone does, I would do the same. Happy for him…”

Norris did at least retrieve two points that could prove crucial in the battle between McLaren and Ferrari come the final race.

“I didn’t give up until the end, and we were quick,” he said. “I did the best I could. But disappointed to have only got two points with the quickest car out there today.

He added: “The team gave me the best car out there today, and I’m very happy and thankful for them. I got a good start. I got past George. I thought George would be our biggest competitor today, and that wasn’t the case. Max was, and he did an incredible job.”

Norris suggested that Abu Dhabi won’t be as good for McLaren as Qatar.

“We go in the same as every weekend,” he said. “Wanting to win, wanting to be the best, wanting to be the fastest, and I just need to not be an idiot and do what I did today, clearly.

“I don’t think [the car] will be as good as today. So it’s a massive opportunity lost, and I’ve disappointed the whole team. The only thing I care about is my team.”

Charles Leclerc admits that Ferrari has to “do something special” in the Qatar GP in order to gain points on McLaren in the fight for the constructors’ title.

The Maranello team lost a further six points in Saturday’s sprint, leaving the gap at 30 heading into today’s main event.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will start third and fourth, behind George Russell and Max Verstappen, while Leclerc is fifth and his team mate Carlos Sainz seventh.

“Honestly, today was the best we could do,” said the Monegasque driver. “I was really happy with both of my laps. There was very little between them, I think two or three hundredths. There wasn’t anything more in the car tonight.

“I honestly think that we are much closer than what we thought, compared to McLaren. However, compared to Mercedes and Red Bull, it’s another story. It was surprising for us to see them so fast.

“We did not expect them to be so strong. McLaren, we expected them to be better compared to us. So all in all, we are fighting McLaren, so we have a good race pace and tomorrow everything is possible.”

Leclerc said the target had to be to get ahead of the McLarens in the race.

“We still had hope that we could turn the situation around,” he said. “Because at the end, if we want to win the constructors’, we’ve got to finish in front this weekend, and we cannot afford to just take the points available.

“We need to overperform in order to target the constructors. So, yeah, tomorrow we’ve got to do something special in order to gain some points on them.”

He added: “I think we’ve got a good race pace. We’ve got to have a good start, because I don’t think our race pace is enough to overtake on track.

“So definitely strategy and race starts will be key moments for us in order to gain positions on the McLarens.”

Carlos Sainz is concerned that Ferrari will face “a mission impossible” in its fight for the constructors’ championship unless it beats McLaren in today’s Qatar GP.

McLaren gained six points on the Maranello outfit in Saturday’s sprint race and can clinch the title today race if Ferrari has a bad race.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri start third and fourth, while Charles Leclerc is fifth, and Sainz seventh.

The Spaniard acknowledges that even it the title remains mathematically open heading to Abu Dhabi it could be beyond Ferrari’s reach.

He says that come what may the team has to beat McLaren, disregarding the fact that a Mercedes and a Red Bull start ahead of both teams and could potentially take the biggest haul of points.

“I don’t think it’s about third and fourth, I think it’s about recovering points on them,” said Sainz. “I think we just need to finish ahead of them and independently of the position.

“And of course, it’s good for us if they don’t win P1 and P2, but even if they finish P3 and P4 ahead of us, it’s still going to be almost mission impossible in Abu Dhabi. So it’s more than that.

“It would need to be a very, very big change of pace, because from going a couple of tenths off to being a couple of tenths in front to be able to overtake them, there needs to be a big swing in performance.

“But at we can least stay with them in the race, play with them with strategy and see the start, which is always to do the pit stop, and then see what can happen.”

He added: “So far, I think we’ve maximised everything. Today, I think I should have qualified P6 instead of P7, I went into the last lap of Q3 without a car in front, a tow in front. I don’t know why we were leading the pack, and that’s normally a couple of tenths in the straights for free. Probably missed a bit of that.

“At the same time, the 20.8 of Charles is the 20.8 that the car can more or less achieve. So far, I think we’re maximising everything, but maximising everything, as I said, might not be enough, or might be good enough.”

Sainz admitted that Ferrari struggled to switch on the soft tyres in qualifying.

“I think it’s just the type of corner,” he said when I asked about the team’s form. “You see the track, and we shouldn’t be very quick. And it just seems our through corner balance, overloading in the car in these long combined fifth, sixth gear corners, that doesn’t seem to be performing as well as it should.

“I think we’ve tried everything possible with a soft tyre to switch it on better. Faster, slower, out laps, anything you can imagine.

“And we just simply seem to be finding a bit of a hard limit with the lap time that that we could produce. Particularly with Charles, with the new floor, and also me with a bit of a more difficult session than yesterday.”

Sainz confirmed that the team made changes between the sprint race and qualifying.

“We definitely tried quite a few things, both on setup, but also in tyre preparation. But it just didn’t seem to change our fundamental issues.

“I think when you’re talking about tyre preparation, you’re talking about the last tenth, when you’re like three or four tenths and you see all the medium speed corners, you’re just lacking minimum speeds and a bit of through corner balance, and you realise that maybe just it’s not quite in there.

“But anything can happen still tomorrow, a lot of people also there in the front to upset a bit the order. So I think we can still have a good day.”

Max Verstappen says that George Russell “got excited” during the qualifying incident that triggered a one-place grid penalty for the Red Bull driver and led to him losing pole.

Russell came across a slow-moving Verstappen as both drivers were on their prep laps prior to their final runs in Q3.

The Mercedes driver was obliged to run wide, and subsequently was not able to improve his time.

However the stewards investigated the incident and deemed that Verstappen was “driving unnecessarily slowly considering the circumstances.”

“There were two cars in front of me also making a gap, so I had to make a gap,” said the Dutchman before the penalty was confirmed.

“And I knew that everyone was on a slow lap, not on a push lap. And then I think George got excited. He wanted to pass and get around. That’s fine. I mean, everyone, of course, tries to get their position to have the best possible start to the lap.”

The fact that Verstappen was in the fight for pole came as a surprise after his team had made significant set-up changes following the sprint.

“It couldn’t have been worse,” he said. “So we just looked at it. It’s not all super clear, but we’re like, well, we have to go and try this direction. We put it on the car and it worked. And of course a lot of people back at the factory analysing a lot of stuff already throughout the whole weekend.

“But at the end of the day you have to make the decisions also on track if you want to do it or not. Simulator is running in the background as well. And yeah, a miracle happened!”

Verstappen said consistency was the key to the improvement.

“Just felt a bit more hooked up on entry, mid-corner,” he said. “Like everything that was bad before improved quite a lot. So I felt it straight away from lap one that it all just felt a bit more consistent. And that’s exactly what we needed to be a bit more competitive.
 
“I think from the first lap in Q1, it felt a lot more promising, but then to get the tyres in the right window is very tough. So then it went away a little bit, then it came back again. And then, yeah, luckily for Q3, I think it was there. And yeah, very happy with how we turned it around.”

He added: “I felt confident in the car, so I was pushing it,” he said. “And honestly, the whole lap was hundredths here, then two hundredths and then the last corner a little bit. It was not a lot compared to the previous lap, but it was just everywhere a little bit better.

“Of course, naturally there is a little bit less feel in the car because I only did one run. That helps. So yeah, it was all pretty close, but it felt just a lot more connected for me.

“And that was definitely necessary. And then you can attack the corners a bit more. And that gave us pole position.”

Regarding prospects for the race he said: “It’s still a bit of a question mark. I did feel that yesterday we were not too far off in qualifying, and then I felt like we were quite far off in the Sprint.

“So this is great, to be on pole, but I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be enough to really be the outright fastest, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”

George Russell says it’s not a surprise that his Mercedes Formula 1 team is fast in Qatar given the smooth nature of the track.

Russell initially qualified second, having gone wide when he came across a slow moving Max Verstappen just before he started his lap.

Having earned pole the Dutchman was later given a one-place penalty for moving unnecessarily slowly, thus swapping the positions of the two front row men, and giving Russell his fourth top spot of the season.

Speaking before that decision was made Russell suggested that the Verstappen incident had prevented him from earning pole on merit.

“To be honest, my first lap was really strong,” he said. “I was really pleased with that. I think it was a couple of tenths clear. And then I just didn’t improve on that last lap.

“Obviously, I had a really scrappy out lap with the near collision with Max, and I ended up going through the gravel two corners prior to opening my lap. So it was not a good start. So that was probably the 55 milliseconds.

“It’s great to be in this groove at the moment, four front row starts in a row, which has been really pleasing considering where we were three or four races ago.

“And the race pace this morning looked great. So Max did a great job. Red Bull seemed to turn it around a little bit since yesterday, but let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
 
Russell had a clear idea why Mercedes has been so fast recently.

“Well, I think these last two races, the circuits have played in our favour,” he said. “We know when we can get the car low and stiff on a smooth track, it works pretty well.

“Brazil, we didn’t actually have the pace. We were very slow in the sprint, in the sprint qualifying, but of course it was a wet qualifying on the Sunday morning, so that evened things out a little bit.

“So I think we flattered ourself a bit in Brazil, but these last two races, when we really, analyse it. I don’t think it’s a surprise the car is performing as well as it has shown.”

Regarding the race he said: “I think it’s going to be a really close fight between all four teams. Ferrari looked on the same pace as Lando and myself this morning. I hope it’s going to be a good one, but the tyres seem pretty resilient. Maybe we’ll see another DRS train, I don’t know.”