‘You want to fight for every single position’ – Russell offers verdict on Mercedes team orders in Dutch GP

George Russell has accepted that Mercedes’ call for him to pull aside and allow team mate Kimi Antonelli through was “the right decision”, even though it left him at the mercy of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages of the Dutch Grand Prix.

It was a tricky race day for the Silver Arrows as neither driver seemed to be comfortable with their cars, which was especially true for Russell, who lost a position to Antonelli on the opening lap before dropping behind Oscar Piastri at the restart.

He then ended up in a tight battle for P4 with the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, which only came to an end when Russell dived into the pits. Further stops resulted in him surging back into his original position of P2, with Antonelli rapidly closing up.

By that point, eventual winner Lando Norris was too far ahead to catch, but Mercedes still requested that Russell let the Italian past – something that went directly against his earlier suggestion that they “think about working as a team” to guarantee a double podium finish.

He nevertheless obeyed and later admitted: “Kimi was ahead of me anyway so he deserved to finish ahead. Of course when you’re in the race, you want to fight for every single position.

“With the pace with the new tyre, he would’ve overtaken me anyway so it was the right decision. Just happy to be standing on the podium. It’s been a little while for me. It’s been a strong weekend overall so I’ll take the positives.”

The Briton only just managed to fend off Hamilton for P3 as his former team mate crossed the line less than a second behind, marking a stark difference from the performance that saw him secure a commanding victory in the Sprint just a day earlier.

Despite the frustration, Russell was left feeling content with how the round played out for him, explaining that it was an improvement on previous events.

“I come away from this weekend as a whole satisfied – it’s been my best weekend for quite a while,” he said after the race. “I’ll take those positives. I think that first VSC towards the end came at a tough point because it gave Lewis that opportunity to get a free pit stop.

“Kimi was really struggling on the hard tyre and I was catching him just before he got overtaken by Lando. At that point in the race, I was like ‘I think P2 is on the cards here’, then of course we split the strategies at the end.

“Considering that as a team we’re not as dominant as we once were, this weekend I definitely would’ve taken P1 yesterday and P3 today. It wasn’t a perfect race – the start wasn’t great, I lost the position, I was sleeping a bit with Piastri.

“I was on a different energy deployment at the beginning and didn’t even look in my mirrors. I just went up to the corner and next thing, he’s on my inside. That caught me off guard so I was a bit disappointed with that, but P3 was a fair result.”