"I was driving my heart out" - Disconsolate Russell misses out on first points

Tuscan Grand Prix

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"I was driving my heart out" - Disconsolate Russell misses out on first points

Russell dropped from ninth to 11th at the final restart in Mugello

Ewan Gale

Sunday 13 September 2020 19:17 Updated: 19:44

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Williams driver George Russell was left disconsolate after missing out on scoring his first point in Formula 1 despite claiming he drove his heart out.

Russell was able to take advantage of two four-car crashes in the opening 10 laps of the Tuscan Grand Prix at Mugello to move into the top 10.

With new team owners Dorilton Capital attending the race, Russell was running ninth ahead of Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari when the second red flag came out with 14 laps to run.

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Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean were effectively given an extra warm-up lap before the final restart, which seemed to prove decisive as both powered off the line to overtake both Russell and Vettel.

Russell said there was nothing he could do at the end to take his first points. "We made a mega start for the first start," he told Sky Sports F1.

"The second start, I can't really remember what was happening. I was ahead of the Ferraris. The pace was good, I was fully maintaining position and we had P9 sort of in the bag to bring home, the tyres were great.

"Then, I just lost all of my positions off the line with a poor launch. I don't really know what happened because everything seemed to be on target with the procedures."

Referencing the race start and first restart, Russell said "both the other launches were okay."

"They were nothing special but that last one on the soft tyres, I just had wheel spin which was really odd. I got hit by Kimi and you can't do anything from there on in. I was driving my heart out."

The first red flag, which took out four of the midfield rivals ahead of Russell, was caused by the mid-pack trying to second guess when race-leader Valtteri Bottas would return to green-flag speed.

Russell, who is no stranger to such melees from his junior formula days, conceded he was not surprised such an incident occurred.

"It was kind of inevitable when everyone is accelerating and decelerating," he explained.

"It's just a concertina effect that has happened before in junior formulas and it will always continue to happen when you have got 20-odd cars in the race with acceleration and deceleration very quickly.

"Not ideal. It obviously caused a lot of damage for a lot of people."

Before you go...

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