George Russell has revealed his illness during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend would have ruled him out had it been at a more physically demanding track.<\/p>\n
It emerged on Thursday that Russell was feeling under the weather, forcing the Briton to miss media day.<\/p>\n
He nevertheless jumped behind the wheel for the race weekend but struggled throughout the three days.<\/p>\n
Despite not feeling up to full health, Russell enjoyed a competitive race and crossed the line in P2 for his best result since his victory at Canada.<\/p>\n
With Singapore coming up in two weeks, Russell stated Mercedes would have had to resort to reserve driver Valtteri Bottas around such a physically tough circuit if that weekend had been ahead of the one in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, it was Baku,\u201d Russell told the media, including RacingNews365. \u201cEven though it’s one of the toughest circuits mentally. Physically, it’s maybe one of the easiest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I was much better. Friday and Saturday, I was really rough. Had it been Singapore, as an example, I think I probably would have called it a day on Friday, to be honest, and probably wouldn’t have done the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunate timing. I haven’t been ill for a couple of years, actually. So it just all hit me at once these days, but I’m on the up now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bottas would have been far from an inadequate replacement for Russell, given that the Finn is a race winner with Mercedes around Baku.<\/p>\n
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has revealed Russell was even doubting his ability to drive on Friday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Friday, it was touch and go in the morning,\u201d Wolff told Sky F1. \u201cHe himself said, ‘I’m not sure I can make it’.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomehow, he recovered, but then overnight, it got worse again every single day. I think it was a big push for him to even drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then to perform like this, it’s mega.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bottas returns to F1 next season with the new Cadillac team, parting another returnee in Sergio Perez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell has revealed his illness during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend would have ruled him out had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,2476,578,2479,2477,2480,2478,930,576,577,932,1885,2475,582,82],"class_list":["post-161022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}