George takes his third podium of 2022 in Baku
George claims his third podium of the season in third position in Azerbaijan.
Lining up in P5, George made an incredible getaway, managing to get through Turn One without incident as he fiercely defended against Pierre Gasly.
On lap nine of the 51-lap race, a problem for the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz Jr. brought out the Virtual Safety Car and George seized the opportunity to switch from the Medium to the Hard Pirelli tyres, rejoining the race in P4.
With Sergio Perez ahead, George set about closing the gap to the Mexican driver in P3.
A problem for Charles Leclerc forced the Ferrari driver out of the race, promoting George into P3 and the podium places.
Utilising another VSC after a mechanical issue for Kevin Magnussen, George pitted for another set of Hard tyres with 19 laps remaining.
Unable to catch Perez ahead, George extended the gap between himself and the fighting duo of Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton to comfortably secure third position.
George Russell – Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One™ Team Driver
We were smashing the ground every single corner and every lap for 90 mins, it was pretty brutal - I'll sleep well tonight! It's what we've got to deal with it at the moment, there's not much we can do in the short-term. There's lots of intelligent people, hugely talented engineers in the sport so I'm sure we'll find a solution.
We didn't get the podium on pure pace today but we did it because the team have worked very hard to deliver a reliable car, we did a good job to be ahead of the midfield and obviously we picked up on Ferrari's misfortune.
As a team, we take that as a positive and kudos to everyone at Brackley and Brixworth on all the hard work. We know we aren't quick enough and we've got a long way to go to bring performance. We're experimenting and trying things, one week turnaround to Montreal will be tough to find the solution but hopefully we'll get there soon.