A heartbreaking end to George’s journey with Williams Racing as a gearbox issue forced him out of Formula One’s final race at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

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As the sunset and the cars lined up on the grid, George took his place in P17 on a set of Medium compound Pirelli tyres.

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When the lights went out, George struggled off the line and dropped back into P19 as he battled against the Haas of Mick Schumacher for P18.

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After finding his way past the German driver, George began his fight towards the points, benefiting from some early pitstops, the Brit moved up into P15 by lap 22 of the 58 lap race.

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With older tyres, George was unable to keep pace with those ahead and dropped back into P17. Unfortunately, on lap 26, an issue for the gearbox of George’s FW43B machine forced the Brit into the pits and out of the race.

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George Russell – Williams Racing Driver

We had a gearbox issue which ultimately ended our race and may have been caused by something flying into the airbox. We need to review whether that was the case but there's nothing we can do about that, so it's unfortunate to finish our season in that way. The important thing though is that we sealed P8 in the Constructors' Championship, which was much more than we could have hoped for this year and was our goal at the start of the weekend. I'm proud of what we've achieved as a team and I'm grateful to everyone at Grove for their hard work.

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