George Russell was “over the moon” after capitalising on the wet weather to claim his best qualifying result in Formula 1 for the Styrian Grand Prix.
The Briton not only made Q2 for the first time in his F1 career but was very close to knocking both Ferrari’s out of Q3 finishing just 0.091s behind Sebastian Vettel in P12.
Throw in the three-place penalty Charles Leclerc has for impeding Daniil Kvyat in Q1 and that will become 11th on the grid for Sunday’s race.
“Over the moon,” he said about the result.
“There’s no way I would have believed that [we’d be fighting for Q3] prior to this weekend. If you told me this two weeks ago, prior to last weekend, even Q2 was a stretch.
“I really love that. Like I say, sketchy out there, the car was moving out there but I loved it.
P12, and a best-ever qualifying for @GeorgeRussell63 ?
That’s one very happy young man ?#AustrianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/xlDze1cpng
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 11, 2020
“I am really pleased for all of the guys – they come week in week out giving it everything. Even though it’s not the true pace of the car they deserve this result,” he added.
“Well, I hope we can at least hold onto it. I think surprisingly our straight-line speed looks relatively good, points are the aim but we need to wait and see.”
Despite Russell’s heorics, Williams head of vehicle performance, Dave Robson, admits some disappointment at not making Q3 for the first time Monza 2018.
“We actually said on the pit wall during Q2 that, yes, we need to look at getting into Q3,” he said.
Also Read:
“That’s obviously the aim, but we didn’t want to lose sight of the fact that we were still fighting for 11th, 12th, or 13th, which would be really valuable for tomorrow.
“So yeah, it’s frustrating to miss out by such a small margin but I think when we look back, and we’ll do it properly at the beginning next week, I think we did pretty much everything we could.
“In those conditions though, I’m sure George knows where he could have gained a bit of time and we could have been slightly better with the tyres I’m sure.
“It is frustrating, but I think on the whole we did a very good job with what we had.”
