F1 News: George Russell Reacts To Huge British GP Crash
Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu was involved in a serious crash at the very beginning of the British Grand Prix as his car flipped after he was hit by Pierre Gasly’s AlfaTauri and George Russell’s Mercedes.
Russell came to a stop in the gravel trap. He jumped out of his car and ran towards the flipped Alfa to give assistance, but with his car being taken away on the back of a flatbed, he was unable to restart the race after the red flag was lifted.
All drivers involved were deemed fit after they underwent checks.
He’s now reacted to the horrific crash and how Guanyu was stuck between the catch fence and tyre wall:
“In that position, he was stuck there,” Russell told the press. “There’s nothing he could have done.
“We need to have I think to avoid the car being stuck in such a fine gap, in the space between the tyre barriers and the metal fence. He was just stuck in there with nowhere to go.”
Russell also admitted that he’d triggered the incident as he was getting “swamped” by cars after poor starts from many of the drivers.
“It was an incredibly scary incident, not just for him but I’m sure for everyone in the crowd as well. It was not nice to see.
“We obviously took a gamble starting on the hards because I didn’t do a good enough job yesterday in qualifying, and we were starting out of position.
“We knew it was going to be very tricky but I just got completely swamped by everybody at the start, and the next thing I know is I was in the side of Zhou. There are so many different emotions.”
Despite him being grateful that everyone involved was okay, he was annoyed at the FIA’s decision to not let him continue his race:
“When I came back I couldn’t quite get the car started but I just wanted to check with my team,” he continued.
“When I came back the car was already on the flatbed and they said we couldn’t restart. So it’s annoying because the only issue we had was a puncture.
“The car was generally fine. There was a little bit of damage, but nothing show-stopping.”
He later said he’d talked to the FIA about this:
“So apparently, as soon as you get assistance, you can’t restart,” he told Sky. “So it’s very frustrating because the car just had the puncture. And there’s no doubt we had the pace to come back to P6 today.”
