George Russell said his victory in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix sprint race was a “milestone” for Mercedes – and that he and Lewis Hamilton would work together to try to repeat it in Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Russell’s win at Interlagos on Saturday was Mercedes’ first this year, for most of which the car has been uncompetitive and unable to challenge at the front.
The 24-year-old admitted he was surprised to be able to catch and pass Red Bull’s Max Verstappen – the first time anyone has done that in a straight fight to the runaway world champion since Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc won the Austrian Grand Prix in July.
Hamilton finished third in the ‘sprint’ event behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz but will start second alongside Russell on the front row for Sunday’s Grand Prix as the Spaniard has a grid penalty for using too many engine parts.
Verstappen finished fourth and will line up for the grand prix third on the grid.
Russell said his win underlined how much progress Mercedes had made since the start of the season, drawing a comparison with the first ‘sprint’ event back at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in April, which he and Hamilton finished 11th and 14th.
“It’s a pretty big milestone for the whole team when we look back at the very first sprint of the year,” Russell said.
“And here we are going to be lining up one-two tomorrow. It is really exciting. I’m so proud of the whole team to keep on delivering with the car.
“This is the first time we have crossed the finishing line first in a race.
“It is a little bit of a shame that this wasn’t the race tomorrow, but it really goes to show the work we’ve done and we are definitely going to be excited for tomorrow.
“And having Lewis and me one-two on the gird is going to give us some options on the strategy and I think we are going to have to work together to do something different for one of us to get the win for the team.”
Hamilton, whose record of winning a grand prix in every season of his career is under threat this year, backed Russell’s view.
The seven-time champion was made an honorary citizen of Brazil earlier this week and said it would be the “greatest dream” to win on Sunday to mark the occasion.
But he added: “It will be tough to race George. We will hopefully have a bit of a battle but either way we have to make sure we get a one-two and get the points for the team.”
Russell said there would be no team orders at Mercedes but said he expected the drivers to run different strategies to give the team the best chance of a victory.
He contrasted that approach with the last race in Mexico, when he and Hamilton started second and third behind Verstappen but ran the same strategy as each other and lost out.
Russell said: “We don’t know what the right strategy is going to be. We will race each other fairly for sure, and I am sure we will probably be splitting the strategies to try and cover all options.
“Hopefully one of us comes away happy but we both recognise based on recent experience we are going to have to go two separate ways.”
Hamilton, who worked his way up from eighth on the grid in the sprint, added: “Getting a one-two either way I will be happy. George has done an amazing job this year and we will of course drive carefully and clean.
“You’ve just always got to have at the core of it, at the front of our mind is the team getting the result. But of course individually we will do our best to try and get the best result.”
What happened to Verstappen?
Russell admitted that heading into the sprint race, he expected Verstappen to “have quite an easy run” to victory.
Russell started third and Verstappen second behind the surprise pole winner Kevin Magnussen of Haas. But after both passed the Dane on lap three, Russell found he could keep pace with the world champion.
Red Bull had chosen the medium tyre for the Dutchman rather than the softs chosen by the rest of the top 10.
But Verstappen ran into higher tyre degradation than the Mercedes drivers and lacked pace.
“It was a bit more difficult than expected somehow,” Verstappen said. “But even on the soft we wouldn’t have been fast enough, so we were clearly struggling on keeping the tyres alive.
“This is something we need to try and fix for tomorrow even though there is not a lot you can do (to the car). It can’t get much worse than this.”
Verstappen said he felt that “at the moment, they (Mercedes) look unbeatable” in the race.
Red Bull’s decision to use the medium tyre for the sprint gives them a potential advantage for the grand prix.
The soft has proved the fastest race tyre in Brazil and Verstappen has two new sets for the race, rather than only one new and one used for the Mercedes drivers.
The second sets for Russell and Hamilton are only lightly used – one flat-out lap in Hamilton’s case and two in Russell’s – but the new set Verstappen has will be both slightly quicker and have a longer potential life.
Russell said: “We all recognised the soft was the best performing tyre in the race, which is quite odd. But that means if you used a soft today you have one less tomorrow.
“So even though Max and Red Bull didn’t have a strong race, they are probably in a slightly better position than us going into the race tomorrow because they have that one extra set of new softs.”
And Mercedes fear Verstappen because Red Bull have won every race since Austria – nine in a row, eight for Verstappen.
Russell said: “It’s going to be interesting – obviously Max is the main man at the moment and those medium tyres just didn’t seem to work.”
Mercedes chief engineer Andrew Shovlin said: “What we would say from what we’ve seen this year is that Max is going to be quick.
“If the track is warmer, it will probably help some of their issues. They looked like they were front limited (lacking front-end grip). That will diminish a bit.
“It doesn’t follow they were unaware the medium was a weaker tyre, it might be they knew it was weak and were getting it out of the way. So I think they were going for strategically the lesser of two evils.
“We all have to run a medium or a hard tyre as well as a soft (in the grand prix) so we are expecting a tougher battle but we couldn’t have got ourselves in a better position. We’ve had decent race pace. We don’t expect it to be anything other than a hard battle.”
Vindication of Mercedes progress
Russell’s win underlined the steps Mercedes have made with a car that started the year the best part of a second off the pace.
Hamilton said: This is such an incredible result for us as a team. We have all worked so hard through the year. Did we think we would be starting on the front row of the Brazilian Grand Prix at the end of the year? Not at all. But that’s what everyone’s worked towards.
“This is a good day. Tomorrow we have to work hard to try and keep them behind us.”
The team put their last major upgrade package on the car at the United States Grand Prix two races ago, and they were in contention for victory both in Austin and Mexico a week later.
Shovlin said: “The upgrade in Austin has given us a good step of performance. The car still has vices we need to get on top of and those are still present but we are just going a bit quicker with the same problems and fixing them we are going to need a new car to do that.”
And he said this had given the team hope that they were going in the right direction for 2023.
“From an engineering point of view, we are getting some kind of confidence that the things we’re doing are right, that we can bring an update and it makes the car go quicker, has been enormously reassuring,” Shovlin said, “because we are going into a three-month period when’re you don’t have these tests of how good you are and whether you’re going in the right direction.
“So setting ourselves on a path where you know you can deliver performance has been useful.
“It has been a very tough year for all the staff. We are working harder than we’ve ever worked and had nothing to show for it for month after month and you’re just pushing on trying to find a direction and results and it’s enormously satisfying (to do so).
“There is a huge amount of belief in the team and it will certainly fuel the motivation over the winter to try and get back to where we want to be, which is at the front.”