George Russell insists he would have won the Japanese Grand Prix if the safety car had been triggered “one lap” later.
Russell finished fourth and lost the Drivers’ Championship lead to his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli, who won the race and now leads by nine points after three rounds.
The safety car was deployed when Oliver Bearman crashed his Haas during the only round of pit stops, handing Antonelli a cheap stop and the lead. Antonelli had been trailing McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc before the trio pitted under normal race conditions.
Russell, who was the last of the leading trio to pit, had stopped just seconds before Bearman’s crash and was left frustrated by how the timing played out. After the race he told Sky Sports F1: “One lap difference and we’d have won the race, but then obviously we just made a meal of it thereafter.”
The safety car came in at the end of lap 27 of 53. Russell was third at that moment but was passed by Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc at the restart, before he later repassed Hamilton to finish fourth. Russell said he hit the harvest limit at the safety-car restart and couldn’t recharge his battery, which left him vulnerable: “I think a number of teams have had this problem on race starts. So I just got flew by from Lewis. And then obviously another battery issue with Charles, when he just flew by me and I was stood still. So, yeah, pretty frustrating. One lap difference and we’d have been having a different conversation.”
Could Russell’s claim be accurate? Had he taken the cheap stop under the safety car he would likely have led, but Antonelli appeared to be the quicker Mercedes on the day and had been closing rapidly on Russell before the stop. Switching from medium to hard tyres might have reset pace, but Antonelli’s surge at the restart while Russell battled the Ferraris suggested the Italian would have been able to apply pressure even if he had started the final stint behind his team-mate.
Piastri arguably suffered the most bad luck. He produced an excellent first stint to keep Russell behind, pitting early to avoid an undercut. He still retained the lead over Russell after the Mercedes stop and, without the safety car, would likely have remained ahead once all front-runners completed their stops. Whether he could have held off the Mercedes cars for the remainder of the race remains unknown, but his early defence indicated he would have had a fighting chance.
Russell’s weekend had been compromised before the race when a setup change ahead of qualifying left him short on pace. He qualified second but was three tenths off Antonelli and then had to manage the imperfect setup throughout Sunday. Both Mercedes drivers fell down the order at the start, with Antonelli dropping from pole to sixth and Russell from second to fourth.
Assessing the result, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the setup mistake left Russell on the back foot: “The mistake that was made collectively really put George on the back foot with the car. From Q1, it was not good enough anymore and he had to fight with that too today.” Wolff added the call to pit Russell when they did was intended to protect track position from Leclerc, who was quick on fresher rubber. “With equal cars, it’s going to be close but the moment where it was about going fast, we had to decide to protect the position against Leclerc but Kimi was putting in perfect times, so that made the difference. But he [Russell] did not have a car that was perfect.”
F1 returns May 1-3 with the Miami Grand Prix, the season’s second Sprint weekend, live on Sky Sports F1.