George Russell revealed that he had been “rubbing hands together” because of possible rain in the opening stages of the Hungarian GP.
Rain was expected to fall at the Hungaroring at the start of the Hungarian GP. Given the circumstances, Russell began the race on Soft tires, while Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were on Mediums. The Mercedes driver hoped to get the advantage.
In the end, there was no heavy rain which meant that Russell’s gamble did not pay off. The Briton ended the race in P3.
“It was always going to be a tricky afternoon because there was rain in the air throughout,” Russell said after the race.
“Usually when you are on pole position and it is spitting you are pretty disappointed, but knowing that I was on the Soft tires I was kind of rubbing my hands together.
“I made a really good start, the first four laps were really strong and pulled the gap to three seconds to Carlos and unfortunately the rain stopped, so the Medium tires came into their own, but we still had a good first stint and we pitted early on both occasions to cover Max [Verstappen] and cover the Ferraris and ultimately Max was too fast for us today.
“That put us in a very tricky position in that last stint on the Mediums and I was already struggling a bit and my engineer said 25 laps to go and the rain started falling and temperatures were dropping, so I thought it was going to be a tricky last few laps.”
