Russell angered after Oz race hopes go up in smoke

George Russell was hoping for a break-through performance in today's Australian Grand Prix, and duly got off to a dream start when the lights went out at Melbourne's Albert Park.

But from that point on the day quickly unravelled, and he found himself parked by the side of the track at the end of pit lane after a dramatic engine fire curtailed his race on lap 18.

"We did everything right this weekend," he lamented. "We had a great qualifying yesterday and today, the start was perfect. We managed the first stint well and I could have extended it quite a lot more.

"[But] as soon as I came through the high-speed turn ten, I felt something go. Three corners later, I was stopped," he sighed. "I see no reason why we couldn't have fought for victory today, so it's disappointing.

Russell's race couldn't have got off to a better start when he managed to dive down the inside of pole sitter Max Verstappen to take the lead of the race in the opening corner with Lewis Hamilton also up into second.

"Looking at the pace of Max - though I am sure he was just managing - it would have been difficult for him to pass, especially with Lewis in between the two of us."

But it all started to go awry on lap 7 when Alex Albon spun out and a safety car was deployed while the Williams was retrieved. Mercedes responded by calling Russell in for an opportunistic pit stop to change from medium to hard tyres.

While it might have been the clever call, the decision was immediately undermined when race control then red flagged the race - allowing everyone else to come in and change tyres for free before the subsequent restart.

• Read also: Verstappen wins in Australia after chaotic late restart

"It was unfortunate with George," commented team boss Toto Wolff. "He had a great stop from the lead and changed onto the hard tyre. It was absolutely the right call, and he would have been very much at the front.

"With the red flag his race was not so good anymore. He still could have made it to the front, though, so he was unfortunate to have a power unit failure."

"George had put together a strong weekend," concurred Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. "He was unfortunate that the safety car became a red flag. Things then got worse with the power unit issue."

Russell said he simply couldn't understand why the red flag decision had been made, if not simply for the need for Formula 1 to 'put on a show' to entertain the fans.

"I don't really know what's going on with some of the decisions at the moment," he said. "We're all trying to work together with the FIA to improve things, but it's seemingly a bit of a challenge.

"It's sort of reminiscent of the decision of last week [sic] in Saudi to bring out the safety car when the car was totally off the track," he complained.

He wasn't the only one to be baffled by that call, with McLaren's Lando Norris adding: "The whole point of red flagging it, it feels like was just to put on a show."

As for Russell, he felt his performance this weekend had been at the same level as last year's Brazilian GP where he recorded his first F1 career victory with Mercedes.

"We've still got a lot of work to do to catch Red Bull, but we can take the positives from this weekend," he said.

"Every time we've taken to the track, we couldn't have done any more. We maximised everything and I'm proud of the job that we have done. "

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