George Russell bites back at Lewis Hamilton comments as Mercedes stars arrive in Melbourne | F1 | Sport

George Russell has struck back after Lewis Hamilton claimed to have made the wrong ’50:50 choice’ over his car set-up at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. With Russell taking P4 ahead of Hamilton in fifth, the former Williams man put the decision down to hard work with his team of Mercedes engineers rather than any element of good fortune.

The Silver Arrows enjoyed a slight improvement in Jeddah last time out by beating both Ferraris, although the same trio that made the podium in Bahrain – Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso – repeated the feat for the second race running. 

Russell showed greater pace than Hamilton throughout the weekend, forcing the seven-time world champion to admit that if he had opted for the youngster’s set-up, it would have given him a better chance of taking the fight to Red Bull and Aston Martin. 

“The strategy didn’t really work out for me,” he told Sky Sports F1 at the time. “The set-up was a bit off – I think if I had the set-up that George had, I would have been in a better position.

“There was like a 50:50 choice. I chose one way, he chose another.

“More often than not, the way he went was the wrong one, but it just happened to work, so I could only match his pace rather than be quicker.”

Russell bit back at the suggestion of a coin-flip situation, however, instead claiming that he ‘knew’ his set-up decision was superior to Hamilton’s due to hard work and deliberation with his team.

“I don’t think there’s any luck in it at all,” he told reporters.

Amid a feeling that Aston Martin could excel this time out, Russell believes that Mercedes being in the fight for a podium would be a satisfactory result. “If we manage to get another P4, or fight for the podium, that will probably be exceeding the potential of the car,” he claimed.

“I think Aston are going to be really strong here. They seem to be the quickest car in the medium-speed corners, which obviously there’s plenty of them here in Melbourne, so if we can fight with Aston and Ferrari again, that’d be a good weekend.”