George Russell’s wait for his first world championship point in Formula 1 continues after an agonising P11 finish at the Tuscan Grand Prix.
The Williams driver had emerged unscathed from the chaos in the early laps and was well on course to giving the British team their first top 10 of the season and of the Dorilton Capital era.
Instead, the crash for Lance Stroll at Arrabbiata 2 and subsequent standing restart left Russell chasing the two Ferraris in the closing laps but to no avail.
“Without that red flag, we’d have been in the points,” the Briton stated post-race.
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“The pace was good, I was fully maintaining the position, we had P9 sort of in the bag there to bring home.
“The tyres were great and then just lost all my positions off the line with that second restart with a poor launch. Everything seemed to be on target with procedure.
“I just went straight into wheel spin which was a bit odd and got hit by Kimi and you can’t do anything from there. I was driving my heart out.”
Russell’s misfortune even disappointed the man who denied him his first F1 point in P10, Sebastian Vettel.
“I felt a bit sorry to be honest for him because I felt he drove really well, especially before the last restart he was quicker than us, more consistent,” he told Dutch broadcaster Ziggo Sport. “He managed his race well, I could see what he was doing.
“It will come for him but… poor soul! I think he really deserved the point today.”
Russell was also asked about the bedlam seen at the first Safety Car restart, which saw four drivers wiped out on the main straight and 12 later warned by the stewards for having contributed towards the incident.
“It was kind of inevitable when they were accelerating and decelerating and there’s just a concertina effect,” he said.
“This has happened a number of times before in junior formulae, it will always continue to happen when you have 20-odd cars in the race that are accelerating and decelerating very quickly.
“[It’s] not ideal, I don’t know if anyone got a penalty for that, but it caused a lot of damage for a lot of people.”