Russell finished second on the race starting grid right before the Melbourne race started and he was only 0.236 seconds behind first-placed racer Max Verstappen who raced for Red Bull team. Meanwhile, another racer from his Mercedes team called Lewis Hamilton ended up in third place with a gap of 0.372 seconds between him and Verstappen. This was the best result that Mercedes had achieved this season so far until now, showing that their efforts paid off to have their car (called W14) perform better after some significant upgrades.
Friday was a tricky day with changing weather, so the usual competitive order got mixed up. George Russell wasn’t doing as well as he expected, as Fernando Alonso from Aston Martin raced ahead by 0.8 seconds. On top of that, Lewis Hamilton only got 13th place!
George showed his surprise at how different the outcome was and said “We weren’t expecting this! Our teams at the factory in Melbourne have been working hard and what a session for us!”.
The car felt incredible and I was driving as fast as I could. Although,I was a bit disappointed because we didn’t get first place. We would have been happy with the 4th or 5th spot before this race began, but it looks like we still have more to give!
Russell said that Mercedes wasn’t sure why they got better results, but was happy anyway. Hamilton was surprised and proud of how well the team did, calling it a “dream” result.
Today was a great success for George! We worked really hard to get up close to Red Bull, so it’s pretty amazing that we actually managed it. It’s like our dream come true! We’ll keep trying to get back to the top of Formula 1 racing.
