Russell's tears dried up: 'I'm not going to let it affect me'

Mercedes could have just left Singapore with its first win of 2023 in its pocket. But trying to get to the front of the field, George Russell went into the wall on the last lap a week ago. Gone were the chances of a win and even a podium finish. Third place eventually went to Lewis Hamilton, his teammate at Mercedes.

With tearful eyes, Russell faced the media afterwards. The Briton realised that he had squandered a unique opportunity for honours, so possibly even a victory. "I had a nice call from one of the chief engineers who said 'George, the only reason we had a chance of victory was because of the amazing job you did the whole weekend'. These things happen, we were pushing ourselves above and beyond and went all in for the win, and a street circuit bites when you make a mistake by one or two centimetres. I'm not going to let it affect me, it's history," Russell said in front of the F1 TV camera.

Hamilton backs Russell

Inside the press room, Hamilton also reacted to Russell's crash a week ago. The former champion understands better than anyone how to deal with big disappointments. "Ultimately it's for him to go through his own process, he’s a grown man," Hamilton said. "But of course, I support him internally and I message him just to, as we do when we both have difficult weekends, just say you'll come back and just shine a bit of positivity because we all know what it's like when you have a difficult weekend."

Either way, Mercedes missed out on a good opportunity for its first win since Brazil 2022, while the car was arguably the best on the entire grid in Singapore. "I don't know whether that's really the case. I think Carlos was managing at the front," Hamilton said. "I think we were all relatively close, I would say, at the front. But what a great race it was, just to have us all that close up front. I don't anticipate having the performance we had in the last race, but we've worked very hard, and we’ll continue to try and push. So I'm hoping that we're not terribly far off this weekend."