Russell hails Williams' 'joyous beast' after Spanish GP points charge

George Russell has praised the strategy employed by Williams in an attempt to end its points drought at the Spanish Grand Prix following which he declared his FW43B as "joyous".

Williams called Russell and team-mate Nicholas Latifi to the pits during the early safety car caused by Yuki Tsunoda's AlphaTauri grinding to a halt at turn 10, with the two drivers gaining track position when others made their scheduled stops later in the race.

At one stage, Russell was within DRS range of then 10th-placed Fernando Alonso but was soon swamped by both Aston Martins and Pierre Gasly, taking away the slim chance of scoring points Williams had given itself, with the Briton eventually 14th.

"Who knows what would have happened had I just have managed to clear Alonso?" questioned Russell. "It was very difficult but all in all I think we did a pretty good job.

"The car felt the best it has ever felt in a race, the best I can remember and that makes it so joyous to drive compared to normal, most of which I put down to just a calm day. We know the beast we have."

On the strategy call to pit under safety car conditions, Russell added: "It was incredibly tricky. I think we did an incredible job pitting under the safety car at the beginning and effectively almost doing a one-stop.

"If I had just managed to clear Alonso then who knows but actually just having Alonso ahead of me helped keep those faster cars behind because I had the DRS.

"They have half a second of car pace and probably a second of tyre pace, then it would have been an incredible task. But I am really pleased we rolled the dice and we found ourselves in that position."