‘I just misjudged it’ – Russell reacts to ‘silly’ crash in Singapore Sprint

George Russell has taken full responsibility for the crash that ended his Sprint in Singapore, admitting that it was the result of overconfidence and a “very silly mistake”.

On a weekend where the Mercedes driver will line up at the back of the grid for the Singapore Grand Prix, the Sprint represented his best chance of competing at the front of the field.

Starting from P2, Russell enjoyed a fantastic launch that saw him pass Max Verstappen for the lead, and he initially managed the tough conditions well after heavy rain made parts of the circuit harder to drive than others.

That was proved when the Briton came around the final corner and dipped his right rear wheel onto the painted white line, which sent him into a spin before he crashed into the pit wall. He was then flung back across the track and came to a halt, bringing an early end to his Sprint.

“I just misjudged it, to be honest,” he reflected. “I came round the corner, I came on the throttle, I got more power than I was expecting from the battery.

“I went a little bit wide and then I touched the white line. The number one rule in the rain is don’t touch the white line. It’s a very silly mistake – overly confident. I think it’s my first crash of the year. It’s annoying to happen from that position.”

While Russell wasn’t the only one caught out as a further eight drivers went on to retire from the event, including McLaren’s Oscar Piastri after he collided with his team mate Lando Norris, his incoming grid penalty for Sunday’s race made the error even more frustrating.

Nevertheless, Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord was confident that Russell, who is running an older specification of the W17 to provide a direct comparison to Kimi Antonelli’s upgraded car, will be able to improve back to the points in the Grand Prix.

“There’s never been a Qualifying session we less need him to compete in, so if [the car] can’t be fixed, that’s okay because we know where he’s starting tomorrow regardless,” Lord explained. “We’ll try and get him out. We think it should [involve] swapping the rear end, right front corner and hopefully the floor isn’t too badly damaged. It didn’t look it, but you never know.

“It’s hopefully not the only opportunity to get a couple of points – there’s still some on offer tomorrow. Super disappointed obviously. He had a great start, great first lap, pulled a second on Max and then unfortunately had a bit of a power surge as he came through the last corner.

“You get the clipped power at full throttle, you get more power until you get to full throttle, and I think that surged. Then the right rear went on the kerb and it spun up. We saw what happened after that.”

Contrastingly, Antonelli improved from his start position of P7 to finish P4 at the chequered flag, capitalising on the misfortune of some drivers ahead whilst Mercedes continued to learn more about the upgrade package they introduced in Malaysia.

Asked whether the car felt better in the Sprint, the Italian replied: “Yeah, I mean we tried some things and it did feel a little bit better. We will make some changes going into Qualifying and hopefully they will help us a little bit because the window seems very small where this package operates.

“We saw some good things last night and hopefully we can improve some things and extract the potential out of the package. I truly believe that there is potential in this package. We just need to find the right balance and hopefully we can improve our pace.”