Scoring just a solitary point at the British Grand Prix, Martin Brundle says Mercedes has a “curious habit” on opting for the hard Pirelli tyres when it makes no sense.
Russell and Kimi Antonelli were set to line up fourth and seventh on the grid in a rain-affected British Grand Prix, but Russell headed down the pit lane on the formation lap to swap to slicks.
Martin Brundle called it a ‘curious habit’ of Mercedes’
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
The Briton was one of five drivers who made the daring move, with Mercedes putting him onto a set of the hard Pirellis. However, an early VSC for Liam Lawson’s crash meant Russell struggled to get temperature into the C2 compound.
As more rain fell, he switched to the intermediates while a drying track in the closing stage of the race meant another switch back to slicks.
Russell: “How brave do we want to be?”
Race engineer Marcus Dudley: “Brave but not suicidal.”
Russell: “Let’s do it.”
The Briton made a pit stop, and again Mercedes went with the hard tyres with the driver spinning on his out-lap.
Other drivers who pitted around the same time as Russell went with either the medium or soft tyres.
Brundle was perplexed by Mercedes’ decision to not once, but twice, choose the hard Pirelli tyres.
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“Mercedes had a curious habit of fitting the hard compound tyres in marginal conditions, with their slower warm-up capabilities but greater eventual longevity, which surely was a case of data winning out over common sense,” he said in his Sky F1 column.
Russell has defended Mercedes’ strategy calls at Silverstone, saying he’d rather take a risk than finish a conservative fourth or fifth.
He does, however, concede that it as maybe too big of a risk.
“Luck is not on your side when the car is slow, it’s as simple as that,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com.
“If you have a fast car, you’re always lucky, and things will always work out towards you.
“Of course, there were decisions that were wrong from my side, from every side. Was it a risk worth taking? Maybe, you know, if you play it safe, you come home with a safe result in our position, and that’s not really what excites us.
Asked about the team’s decision to run the hard Pirellis, Russell admitted that it was not what he expected.
“I wasn’t expecting the hard tyre, at least the medium tyre, maybe the soft tyre. But it was a bit of a surprise to me when you pit early onto a damp track with the hard tyre on,” he said.
“Yeah, I mean, we were the only driver to do it.”
Asked by PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher if Mercedes had made the same mistake twice, the Briton replied: “I think the decision in the beginning was not a bad decision. It was dry for 25 minutes, but what we didn’t know is we would have 15 minutes of virtual safety car.
“As soon as it was dry, as soon as we got going, we were five seconds faster than the intermediate tyre. So I believe with no virtual safety car, I think the dry tyres would have been ahead of the people on the wet tyre, but that went against us.
“So at the end of the day, you take a conservative decision, we will come home with a conservative result. When you have a fast car, you can afford to be conservative, because you will always get a good result.”
Russell’s team-mate Antonelli wasn’t able to complete the Grand Prix as he retired with crash damage after being rear-ended by Isack Hadjar.
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