
Mexican Grand Prix Sunday race was utterly tragedy for Williams F1 ace George Russell, who accidentally removed his drinks supply tube while checking for damage to his car during the safety car period of the race. The drink system failure made an overheated cockpit and its cost Russell’s whole competitive race.
On the lap 1, Russell and Ricciardo slightly collied at turn 1, following the incident the Brit thought his front-wing was damaged and during the safety car period loosening his belts slightly to get a better view, Russell actually removed the tube to his drink bottle, meaning he had to complete the rest of the race without any fluid to take onboard.
“I thought I had damaged the front wing so when it was safe to do so I slightly loosened my belts and just peered over the top, and in doing so it yanked the drinks tube out,” Russel told reporters after the race.
“So I lost the drinks tube under the Safety Car, it was under the Safety Car when I did that.”
“I wouldn’t call it excitement from my side, it was to be honest probably the toughest afternoon we have had all season,” Russell admitted. It was really, really difficult.
“I thought we were on for a good result after the start, I got up to P9 from P16 on Lap 1 which I thought was relatively strong, and then we were just nowhere, absolutely nowhere. One of those days.”
Russell finally crossed the checkered flag P16, just ahead of his Williams teammate Nicholas Latifi whose race became undone at the start.
“I’ll have to watch the video back to see what happened in that first lap,” he said.
“I thought I was going to come out of the first few corners gaining a couple of positions from the cars going off, but I stayed on track to avoid them and ended up losing out quite a bit.
“After that, with the pace we had, it was just a race of blue flags. It was an afternoon to forget but now it’s onwards to Brazil.”