Russell rues 'scrappy' restart lap that weighed on Baku result

George Russell believes a P5 was on the cards in Baku, had he better negotiated the restart lap that followed the race's Safety Car period.

Russell had his work cut out from the outset, the Mercedes driver lining up 11th on Sunday's grid after struggling unexpectedly in qualifying on Friday.

Nevertheless, the Briton enjoyed a strong launch off the grid, clocking in P9 at the end of the first lap and progressing up to P7 when Nyck de Vries' stranded AlphaTauri triggered a Safety Car on lap 10.

Russell was one of the big beneficiaries of the race's neutralization as he gained another spot after switching from the mediums to the hards under the safety Car regime.

But on the restart, the Mercedes charger successively lost out to Aston Martin's Lance Stroll and then to his teammate Lewis Hamilton who pushed him down to P8 where he remained for the remainder of the afternoon.

Russell suggested that he should have done a better job on the restart, which would have potentially set him up for a top-five finish given his car's reasonably good pace.

"I think it was alright but following and overtaking seems pretty challenging this year for everybody and I think those first couple of laps on the race start or the Safety Car restart… I don’t know what it was like behind, but it was line astern from where we were," he told F1TV.

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"Little bit disappointing as I had a really good start, made a few positions, really good move around the Safety Car.

"Then I went deep into Turn 1, almost crashed into Fernando, lost position to Lance.. scrappy lap and then lost the position as well to Lewis.

"Ultimately ended up P8 when potentially P5 was on the cards. That’s the way the game works, we need to be quicker, and try [to] come back stronger in Miami."

Russell's comfortable gap to McLaren's Lando Norris in ninth place compelled the former to head to the pits in the closing stages of the race to bolt on a fresh set of softs in a bid to secure a bonus point for fastest lap, a feat that he duly accomplished.

It was but a small consolation however for Russell who, for the first time this season, was comprehensively outperformed by Hamilton.

And like the seven-time world champion, Russell is hopeful that Mercedes' upcoming upgrade package will boost the form of the Brackley squad's W14.

"Of course I’m hopeful," he said. "Naturally everybody’s gonna be bringing things to the car so the gains may not seem as grand as people may expect, naturally as the whole fields moving forward.

"But hopefully we can do a better job than our competitors. Obviously Red Bull are just in a league of their own at the moment, I guess they just cruised to victory."

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