Toto Wolff has praised George Russell for staying in “touching distance” and taking advantage of a collision between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, which ultimately handed Russell his second career win in Formula 1.
Russell’s win in Spielberg was his and Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team’s first since 2022 São Paulo Grand Prix and Wolff took time to praise his driver’s performance when speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the race.
“I think he’s done at great job to keep himself almost in touching distance. It was third place, that is what it was on pace, that’s solid and we’re happy with that. Obviously when the two started to tangle in front, we had a thought that this could go wrong!
Mercedes have historically struggled at the Red Bull Ring and with it being Wolff’s home Grand Prix, he was delighted to get a good result and get back to winning ways. The Mercedes team principal and CEO believes the upcoming British Grand Prix will suit the team, perhaps hinting that more good performances are on the cards.
“This is track where we’ve never gone on well in the last few years and Turn Three was always a poor corner for us. It’s a relief because in the next tracks, which are more ours, we should have even more pace.
“This is the first home grand prix won for me here and then we go to the next one. We love Silverstone, it’s always been a happy place. It’s high speed, the cars always been good there. We have two drivers that love the circuit and hopefully with the motivation and the energy we have now, we can really make it a spectacular race.
“On real pace, we were 15 seconds behind after 70 laps so it’s around 2 tenths. It’ll be difficult but we have many great things in the pipeline in terms of development and we’re gonna bring more until the end of July and let’s see how much lap time we can extract from there.“
