Devastation for George after a lap-one crash ends his home race at Silverstone.

With the sun shining over the British circuit and the grandstands packed, George lined up in P8 on a set of the Hard Pirelli tyres.

As the lights went out, George began his charge towards the podium places.

A multi-car crash on the run down to Turn One saw George sustain a puncture and the Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu skid upside-down into the barriers, immediately bringing out the red flag.

George’s race came to an end when the British driver abandoned his W13 to check on Zhou.

The heavy crash caused a lengthy red flag as the Chinese driver was extracted from his stricken Alfa Romeo. Thankfully, he was declared fit.

Unfortunately, George was unable to join the restarted race, ending his top-five finishing streak.

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George Russell – Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One™ Team Driver

We started on the Hard tyre because I made a mistake in qualifying and we thought that risk gave us the best opportunity later in the race but there was just very little grip at the start. It's the hardest compound, it's cold out there and I got swamped by all the cars. Next thing I know I got touched, I was in the side of Zhou, and that was it.
I jumped out the car to see if Zhou was okay and I saw it was red flagged straight away but when I came back to the car, I couldn't quite get it started for whatever reason, so I ran back to the team to check. I asked the marshals to leave the car and next thing, when I got back, the car was on the back of the flatbed which meant I couldn't restart.
It was obviously frustrating for my race because the car just had the puncture and there's no doubt we had the pace to come back to P6 today but I'm just glad that Zhou was OK.

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