© Jiri Krenek for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Here is the transcript of the post 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix track interviews and press conference featuring George Russell!
TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Guenther Steiner)
Q: George, congratulations. Fantastic job. How surprised are you to be here on the podium today?
George RUSSELL: Yeah, definitely surprised. Glad to see Carlos and Checo are OK, but I think there was so much hard work this weekend for everybody in the team. There was engine changes on my side, engine changes for Lewis, so much going on. Everybody was working so hard. And we had a really bad start to the race. I was dropping off a lot. But on the Hard tyre, I think we were one of the quickest out there. And that was great. Got past Max. So an added bonus to stand on the podium.
Q: What was the most difficult moment for you in the race? Because as you said, you felt…
GR: Driving full gas into a wall of carbon fibre on the penultimate lap. I mean, that was pretty crazy. The sun was coming down. You couldn’t see anything. I was shocked the Safety Car or VSC didn’t come out sooner. You know, the car could have been anywhere. So, as I said, glad to see everybody was OK. It was a long old race and glad to be on the podium.
Q: Absolutely. Glad for the whole team that you get on the podium. And I think we now have got four manufacturers which can go for the podium. Do you think you can keep in there for the next races?
GR: I mean, we’ve got to be realistic still. We should have finished fifth today. That was the true result. Obviously, with Lando’s qualifying yesterday, he probably would have been up there as well. So I don’t want to get carried away with ourselves with this podium today. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Hopefully, Singapore is a slightly better weekend.
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PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: George, let’s come to you now. Very well done as well. Third time on the podium this year for you. After starting P5, what were your expectations coming into the Grand Prix?
GR: Yeah, we thought we could probably fight for P5. But how the race unfolded, we definitely didn’t expect. We were really slow in the first stint. I was about one and a half seconds slower than Charles most laps. And it all felt pretty disastrous. But then the last 20 laps of the race, we were a second lap quicker than Piastri and Charles and three or four tenths quicker than Max and Carlos and Checo. So, you know, I’m sort of a bit frazzled as to why that is. The only difference is going from a yellow tyre to a white tyre. And, yeah, we need to understand why, understand further.
Q: Well, you were the only team to run the Hard tyre in practice on Friday. Did that prior knowledge help you?
GR: Not really, to be honest. In practice on Friday… The track’s been really dirty this weekend, and the track was about three seconds off the pace on Friday, so I didn’t contribute towards it.
Q: Now, Toto came on the radio saying there were a lot of learnings from this weekend. What were the main ones for you, do you think?
GR: Well, we need to understand what happened in the race, because the last stint, we had a car that was comfortably capable of winning this race. And in the first stint, we had a car that probably didn’t deserve to be in the top 10. And the only difference is the tyres. We’re not the only team to talk about this. It’s pretty frustrating for all of us sometimes when you just don’t understand the fluctuations in performance between a Q1 and a Q2 session, as an example, or one stint to another. So, yeah, it’s a challenge.
Q: Now, you were extremely quick in Singapore last year. Do you fancy your chances there this time around?
GR: I’ve got no idea, to be honest, because as I said, just in this one race, we had a car that could have won if you took the pace from half of the race and a car that should have been outside the top 10 from the other half. So I hope we’ve got the faster version.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Jake Boxall-Legge – Autosport) Another question for Charles, please. We heard you at one point over the radio and Brian, your engineer, said Plan C. And you said, ‘not stupid’. Can you kind of explain what Plan C was? And were you trying to kind of dummy Oscar into taking a stop that was unnecessary at any point?
Charles LECLERC: I won’t go into details of exactly what this plan was, but it wasn’t stupid. That’s the only thing I can say, really. But yeah, we didn’t go for it. But I’ve already said enough for you to understand what that means. So it was a different plan than what we’ve done. And it wasn’t stupid, but that’s it.
GR: How many plans do you have? What letter does it?
CL: It goes until Z. Z.
GR: Not AA?
CL: We are. We are planning everything.
Source: FIA.com
