Toto Wolff has \u201cno doubt\u201d that George Russell will bounce back after he dropped out of the points in the Monaco Grand Prix, adding that his race-altering drive-through penalty was down to a \u201cmistake\u201d made by Mercedes.<\/p>\n
After a torrid weekend in Miami<\/a>, Russell<\/a> rediscovered his form in Canada as he won the Sprint and secured pole position before a power unit failure<\/a> forced him to retire from the race.<\/p>\n Although he was hopeful he could turn his luck around, the Briton struggled to find a rhythm in Monte Carlo<\/a> and ended up searching for answers after qualifying a distant P6, nearly four tenths adrift of his team mate and polesitter Kimi Antonelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n He remained patient during the eventful race and gradually moved up the order as those ahead suffered issues and retirements, seemingly on course for a podium, but he was ordered to serve a drive-through penalty with just a few laps to go and plummeted to P12 in the final classification.<\/p>\n With Antonelli enjoying such a dominant Sunday, achieving his first career Grand Slam, Wolff was left feeling bittersweet by the contrast between his drivers. He said: \u201cWhile standing there [on the podium], I’m always with mixed feelings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Montreal race was [Russell\u2019s] to win. We let him down. Today, probably, we could have had a podium, if not for the penalty mistake. And I’ve talked with him yesterday and today \u2013 this is a long championship. Luck swings in your direction, and then sometimes it doesn’t.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it’s not a question of not knowing how to drive. It’s about having a car underneath that you feel confident with, and that you can go fast, and that’s the fact. Formula 1 is about physics, and not mystics. You don’t unlearn how to drive, and you don’t become a miracle wonder driver. I’m not stressed at all for his performances because we know he’s one of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n Russell was ultimately given the drive-through penalty for failing to serve an original five-second time penalty after speeding in the pit lane. The team brought him in for fresh tyres during a Safety Car period but while other drivers with the same reprimand took the chance to clean the slate, Mercedes<\/a> failed to do the same for the Briton.<\/p>\n Asked about the incident, Wolff reflected: \u201cNot quite sure what the reason was for the penalty and for the many other penalties, whether it’s cutting and then obviously the pit lane time is too quick.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will have been a dozen pit lane speeding incidents. That’s number one, so I can’t really give you an answer.<\/p>\n \u201cAs for not serving the stop, clearly our mistake. We need to look at our communication, whether we actually expected him to come in, because I think what I remember is about staying out and not coming in. But nevertheless, you’ve got to be on it to hold him, and we didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n With Russell taking zero points for a second consecutive Grand Prix, Antonelli has opened up his advantage in the standings<\/a> to 68 points over his team mate, who has also dropped to third behind Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wolff is cautious not to let Russell feel too disheartened by his current run, as he explained: \u201cWe’ve got to stay with both feet on the ground, work through the data, see why this one was a difficult one, and Miami was a difficult one, but it is not the pattern that I have seen through the season.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn’t wish for a better combination of the two in a car, and I have no doubt that George will come back very strong, very strong as well, and that makes us good as a team, that we have two drivers that we can rely on, to score the goals, to score the wins, and help us with the Constructors’ Championship, or make us win a Constructors’ Championship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff has \u201cno doubt\u201d that George Russell will bounce back after he dropped out of the points…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-723072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723072","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=723072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}