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Given that he qualified on pole for the British GP 12 months ago you might think that George Russell would be disappointed to be starting only fourth this year.

In fact the Mercedes driver was more than happy with the final outcome after what had been a tricky weekend for the team – until with perfect timing he pulled off a great lap at the end of Q3.

Lower temperatures at Silverstone were expected to play to the strengths of the W16, but that didn’t really happen.

Eighth fastest on Friday and in the same position in FP3, Russell had a tricky Q1 that saw him asking his engineer to “stay calm” as they discussed the evolving run plan.

He got through in 11^th and was ninth in Q2 – cutting it a bit fine, but job done nevertheless.

Then in Q3 he logged his best lap of the weekend to outpace the Ferraris and put himself in fourth, behind Max Verstappen and the two McLaren drivers.

“Really pleased with that last lap,” he said when I asked him about the session. “Every lap until that point, we were anywhere from five-tenths to eight-tenths off the pace, and we were scratching our heads a little bit today, because we thought with the cooler conditions, things would come more towards us.

“And it was only about last lap in Q3 when, when it did. So it’s always good when your best lap of the weekend is the last one.”

When I asked about the “stay calm” comment he noted that it’s not easy to get everything right as you try to progress through the sessions in the most efficient way.

“Q1 is a really challenging session for probably all the teams other than McLaren, because you want to try and get to Q3 on two sets of tyres,” he said.

“And to do that, you need to get through Q1 on one set of tyres, and also get through Q2 on one set of tyres as well.

“I think it’s always a bit frantic on the pit wall sometimes, and from my side in the car, I’ve got no visibility of what’s going on. So I was just like, ‘Let’s just chill out a bit.’ Tell me what you’re thinking, and we can discuss.”

He had no doubts about what conditions he wanted on Sunday.

“Cold and dry, to be honest. It’s clear whenever it’s warm, we struggle. Whenever it’s cooler, it’s better.

“So as I said yesterday, we’re working so hard to improve this, we have been fortunate that we’re racing here this weekend, because two weekends ago in England, it was 34 degrees. So that’s not how we should be racing.”

P4 was a decent outcome, but Russell conceded that the team was hoping for me before the start of the weekend given the cooler weather.

However it’s not just about ambient and track temperatures, but also the loads that the loads that the corners put through the tyres.

“I do think today was probably, on the whole, less competitive than we were potentially expecting,” he said.

“I think the likes of Ferrari have been very competitive this weekend, which was a bit of a surprise. I know McLaren have brought some little upgrades. We didn’t really bring anything, but we haven’t brought anything for a while now. So we just need to try and understand that.

“It is cool, but of course, still this circuit is so quick. You’re putting so much energy in the tyre, so much temperature of the tyres.

“The tyres are running hotter here compared to what they’re running in Canada. And Canada was 50 degrees track, here is 25 degrees track, but just because of the layout, so that gives it some perspective.”

Meanwhile it was a solid if unspectacular session for Russell’s team mate Kimi Antonelli, who earned seventh place behind the two Ferrari drivers before his Austrian GP crash penalty dropped him to 10th.

“I think was was okay,” said the Italian. “The lap was not amazing, but I’ve been struggling the whole qualifying in high-speed, just struggling with stability, and that killed a bit of confidence throughout the session.

“And I just think it was tough on that side, and especially Sector 2, and start of Sector 3 was always a bit of a struggle because of that. And obviously not super happy, because I have the penalty tomorrow, but we’ll try to build from there.”

After qualifying in P5 in Austria George Russell admitted that his best hope for the race was simply to hang on to his grid position.

Helped by an instant retirement for Max Verstappen – who would probably have had the pace to get in front and stay ahead – Russell achieved his modest target.

Fifth wasn’t much for a guy who won last time out, but nevertheless 10 points was another useful score in a season that has seen Russell consistently at the sharp end.

He’s also now only nine points shy of third placed Verstappen, and beating the Dutchman over the balance of the season is a challenge worth pursuing.

Nevertheless Austria was not a weekend that Russell or Mercedes could be happy with, as high temperatures, the nature of the track and a setup call that backfired conspired to cost him performance.

“I was expecting a bad race, and it was worse than I even could imagine,” he said when I asked him about his afternoon. “The problem was so clear, coming off the back of Canada with the win – with no tyre overheating, we’re the quickest.

“But as soon as you get to a track where there’s a bit of overheating, we drop off so much. The team has been working so hard for six months now to try and solve this issue. We’ve got ideas, but we’re not really making major headway right now.”

Russell agreed that it could have been a lot worse as he once again logged the best result achievable on the day.

“For sure, damage limitation,” he said. “I still take pride in the fact that almost every race this year, we’re maximising the result.

“Today, we definitely could not have achieved anything higher than P5, the same way as last week, the win was the potential, and we got the win. So fingers crossed, it stays cloudy for the rest of the season…

“This was a bit of a perfect storm. The tarmac is one of the roughest of the season, obviously, high-speed circuit, you’re going around the track many times, the most number of laps in the season, and then 50 degrees track temperature. So it was sort of that perfect storm.

“Silverstone is a higher-speed circuit, but the tarmac is actually quite new, which is good news. If the track temperature is the same like last year, it was like 20 degrees, I think last year, it was quite cool, we were on pole. But two weeks ago, it was 31 degrees in England. So if it’s 31 degrees, we won’t be on pole this year.”

The good news for him is that lower temperatures are indeed predicted for the coming weekend, and that could give the W16 a boost.

Mercedes will certainly try to learn lessons from the Red Bull Ring, as team principal Toto Wolff acknowledged.

“When you look at our performance, last year we won the race here, and we were, I don’t remember, 10-15 seconds behind the leaders,” the Austrian said of his home race.

“It was a very solid performance. And this year we are minute behind the leaders. So that is clearly out of the ordinary. What happened today? We do experiment at the moment a little bit how to put the car on track, where we put the balance.

“And clearly, this one we got wrong, and we know that. So I think it’s not only down to those factors, asphalt, long corners and heat. Clearly, that’s not our sweet spot, but it doesn’t explain the gap, and I think we know why. But in hindsight you always know.”

Wolff admitted that the team had taken a setup route that while successful in Canada hadn’t worked out in Austria.

“We need to understand what creates those oscillations, and now is the moment,” he said. “We are not racing for the championship. P2/P3 whatever it is, at the end, only the winning counts.

“And the only positive I take from this race weekend is that we tried something extreme, which was good in Montreal, and it was a complete shot in the knee here.

“Because we could have gone to the setup that we had last year, and that would have put us, I don’t know, on the podium, maybe. But that is not what we tried.”

He continued: “In a way I’m getting fed up with my own explanations of we learn and then next time we understand better. That has been the constant Groundhog Day. But there was something which we tried to take from Barcelona and from Montreal in terms of how we set the car up and where we put the aero and mechanical balance.

“And that was that was clearly wrong. Now we have ticked this box. It would be dramatic if we were racing for a victory, if we were racing for a championship, which we do not. So analyse, dig deep, what was it? And go to Silverstone.”

Asked to expand on that setup choice He added: “We felt that there’s a certain direction we wanted to pursue, which is perfectly logical for Canada, and a bit counter intuitive for Austria.

“And our long runs looked very good. So we thought Kimi’s long run was maybe, second, third, fastest was really good. We can stick to that. And then obviously the temperatures got hotter, the grip ramped up.

“And then we kind of come to the conclusion that we should have maybe stuck to what we knew from last year here.”

George Russell was fourth in FP3 on Saturday in Barcelona, and then showing remarkable consistency the Mercedes driver repeated that result in Q1, Q2 and Q3.

It was a solid qualifying session for the Brit, and a good way to bounce back from the disappointment of Monaco.

Last year he also started the Spanish GP from P4, and he managed to jump into the lead at the start, although as the race progressed he dropped back – to finish in the inevitable fourth.

“We know that on a Saturday, our car is anywhere between P2 and P5, that’s where it’s been all season, and again today,” he said when I asked him about the session.

“It’s good, we managed to get to Q3 only on two sets of tyres. So I’ve got a new soft tyre tomorrow, which is a valid race tyre. So that’s a positive, but we’re realistic, we know that the car isn’t quick on Sundays.”

Russell remains uncertain about the W16’s potential form in the hot conditions of Sunday’s race, which could make life tricky.

However he’s hoping that the harder compounds in use in Spain will favour the team.

“We also made a lot of changes to the car this weekend to try and improve the race pace,” he said.

“So to see that we haven’t really hindered the quali pace is a positive. But then also it may mean it’s not going to improve the race pace.

“So tomorrow is going to be an interesting one for us. We struggled a lot when it was the soft compound of tyres, when it was hot. But when it was the hard compound of tyres in Bahrain and it was hot, we obviously finished second there.

“So it’s when the tyres overheat, if the tyres overheat by 10 degrees on a C4 it’s much more punishing than 10 degrees on a C1 tyre. So that’s sort of the only slight silver lining to give us a bit of hope for tomorrow.”

Meanwhile it was a solid session for Russell’s team mate Kimi Antonelli, who will start from P6.

“After the two difficult weekends, especially qualifying, it was good to kind of get back into the rhythm,” said the Italian.

“Speaking about rhythm, it took me a little bit at the start of the session to get back into that rhythm of qualifying. But also that put me in a position where I had to use one extra set during the whole session, which compromised a little Q3.

“Because definitely the step between used and new was quite big. Overall, still P6. Obviously I want to finish a bit higher in the ranks. But at the same time, there’s a long race tomorrow.”