'With the same strategy as Red Bull, we could have gone into the fight'

George Russell is disappointed with the strategy Mercedes chose for Mexico. In the afterthought with Sky Sports Russell claims he could have been in contention with Red Bull if Mercedes had followed Red Bull's strategy.

Russell had a relatively good start in Mexico. Starting from second place, he immediately saw Max Verstappen drive away, but he managed to defend against teammate Lewis Hamilton who had considerably more speed. But at the first corner, Hamilton passed him anyway, and not much later Sergio Perez also passed him. From then on, the race for Russell was characterised by tyre strategy.

Russell and Mercedes had different ideas on strategy

Russell soon indicated over the team radio that he wanted to do a long stint on the medium tyre and then switch to the soft towards the end. So the opposite of what Perez and Verstappen did. But the Mercedes team ended up having other plans. Russell was brought in to switch to the hard tyre, and drove the rest of the race in pursuit of Perez without the Mexican ever really coming within his reach. Afterwards, Russell still had to admit that his strategy had not worked as he had initially thought.

"I wanted to continue longer on the medium," he explained. "Towards the end, I put as much pressure as I could, but it was like driving on ice. For my feeling, we had the fastest car this weekend. Had we been on the same strategy as Red Bull, we could have really put up a fight."

In the end, Russell did go to the red tyre in the final stage of the race but not as he had planned. The explosion of Fernando Alonso's engine caused damage to his tyres and Russell made an extra pit stop just before the end. It did not earn him a higher position, but it did win him the fastest race lap.