George Russell bewildered by Red Bull slump: “It’s all a bit strange”

Fortunately, one of the great qualities of human beings is that they adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Now we almost take it for granted that in Formula 1 there is a car with better performance than the rest and it is not a Red Bull but a McLaren, although the fact that it does not take advantage of its options as it should is another story. But we do not have to go too far back in time to find a dominant Verstappen with six victories in the first seven races. However, there are some who help to put things into perspective - such as George Russell.

Russell comes home seventh in Monza

At Monza, the Mercedes team sandwiched Max in sixth, with Hamilton ahead of his team-mate, and George still finds it strange to see the top RB20 in that part of the grid: “It’s all a bit strange, like when you look at Red Bull’s performance, nobody would have predicted that five races ago. So either those guys have made big gains or I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to keep working hard and make some changes.”

Admittedly, Verstappen has only finished on the podium in one of the last four races, at his home round of Zandvoort in second place. So Red Bull’s situation is still surprising, but it’s not the only one.

“I think it is very tight at the moment, especially in qualifying, but McLaren and Ferrari definitely seem to have the edge on us at the moment,” added Russell, who finished seventh in Italy after starting third and who in recent races has seen Hamilton sneak into important battles with Mercedes. Since George won in Austria he has not returned to the podium and Lewis has three.

“I made a good start alongside Oscar,” Russell added. “He had the slipstream from Lando and when he pulled out in front of me and hit the brakes I misjudged it, hit the brakes my side and I was locking up the rear tires and was about to crash into him, so had to take avoiding action and that’s where it all went wrong”.

Wolff and the main problem of the W15

With things as tight as they are in the F1 elite right now, you have to try not to lose track of your rivals and Toto Wolff is aware of this. “Congratulations to Ferrari and Charles Leclerc on a well-deserved victory today. It is always a special moment when the scarlet red car wins here at Monza. Our own race was better than Zandvoort but still not good.

“We have not performed at the level we did before the summer shutdown in the last two races. When you don’t have the pace, it makes strategy decisions difficult as we saw today,” he continued.

“We have some time to analyse why that is now before Baku and aim to come back stronger,” sums up the Austrian boss, who is clear about the problem with the W15: “It was easier to get speed out of the car in one lap, but we were not able to maintain the performance of the tyres for a longer period of time.”