George Russell was left fuming following qualifying at the São Paulo Grand Prix after missing out on pole position when his Mercedes team told him to back out of his fastest lap in Q3.
Russell had a five-place grid penalty hanging over him regardless of his qualifying position at Interlagos, but appeared to have the pace to beat McLaren’s Lando Norris to pole position had he completed his final flying lap before rain intensified at the end of the session.
During the lap he was catching Alex Albon in the second sector, leading his race engineer to tell him to back off and make space to the Williams for the next lap.
Russell followed the suggestion from the pit wall only for heavier rain to hit the circuit on the following lap and ruin any chance of improving his lap time.
“Mate, I should have f---ing finished the lap,” Russell said over team radio.
He added: “You f---ing told me to back off! What the hell?!”
When team principal Toto Wolff interrupted Russell to tell him he had secured second place, the Mercedes driver replied: “I don’t want to be P2, I want to be P1 and that was a P1 lap.”
Russell’s disappointment came just one weekend after his championship chances were snuffed out by teammate Kimi Antonelli, who was crowned Formula 1’s youngest world champion in Mexico City last Sunday.
Russell said the wet qualifying session in Brazil was one of the rare occasions this year where he felt locked on for pole position, making the radio call from his team all the more frustrating.
“I think it was just a bit of miscommunication,” he said when asked about the radio message. “I need to speak with the team because we believed we’d get another lap before the rain came in. So I was on a really strong lap and I was asked to back off because I caught up Albon and then obviously the rain came.
“So, yes, it was very disappointing. You need to understand how it happened and why we got that wrong. But I felt very strong the whole session -- I had more confidence in the wet than I had in the dry.
“But yes, I definitely felt pole was there for the taking.”
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Asked if he considered overruling his team, he added: “They’ve got the weather forecast in front of them and I don’t. This is where you need that trust and you’re relying on one another.
“Obviously, it was the wrong decision and it was a decision that I think as soon as it was made, I think we knew it was the wrong one because already they could actually feel the rain pouring harder.
“So we need to understand we’re relying on a lot of systems. We can’t point the finger at somebody. We need to understand why did we make that decision and were our systems telling us what we needed to know because you’re relying on the radar.
“But it doesn’t make it any less frustrating for me. It’s not my engineer’s fault. He’s relaying information.
“He’s ultimately the one who passes the message on. But he’s got 12 people talking to him, giving him that information to relay on. So we just need to understand why we made that decision.”
Despite the weather radar showing a high chance of the rain intensifying, Wolff defended Mercedes’ decision, saying the team could not have predicted what happened.
“You know, if we were to have a crystal ball to know whether you should back off or not then that would be helpful,” the team principal told Sky Sports.
“A difficult one, it’s a 50-50 call, he was running into Albon, was 18 milliseconds up on Norris at that stage so I don’t think it would have been enough for pole, but obviously he’s thrown perfectly all sessions and he, you know, merited to be a pole.
“Like I said, he deserved it but you can’t make that call, it’s going to be 50% right or wrong like I said.”
After the session, Russell played down the suggestion he had been upset by Wolff’s radio message.
“I mean, when you’re a driver, you’re the one who feels it the most,” Russell said. “And going back to his leadership skills, we’ve got to remember, you know, we collectively made a misjudgment today.
“And there’s members of my team who are going to be feeling as bad as I am currently. So, you know, it’s important to remember that.
“And we need to just keep the morale high. It was a very solid performance. And I guess we take the positive from that.
“But yeah, there’s no point for pole, but it would have just been a nice little one to add to the tally.”