George Russell urges Mercedes to take risks after radio comment

George Russell felt Mercedes could have taken more risks during Spanish Grand Prix qualifying, as he explained his "too conservative" radio call. 

Russell will start fourth in Barcelona, having set the exact same lap-time as Max Verstappen on a 1:11.848s, but as the world champion set the time first, he will start ahead of the Mercedes.

They were both 0.302s slower than pole-sitter Oscar Piastri, with Russell radioing the team to say he felt they had lost two-tenths of a second for being too conservative and not doing "what was discussed."

It turns out that this discussion stemmed around using Kimi Antonelli for a tow on Russell's first Q3 lap, given the Italian only had one new set of soft tyres available. 

"I just said that as we've been P4 all weekend, I just felt we could have been a bit more aggressive with the strategy to try and get a slipstream into Turn 1," Russell explained when questioned about the radio call by RacingNews365.  

"Especially with Kimi only having one set of new tyres, he was never going to set a competitive lap on his old set, because even if he did the lap of his life, the tyres are seven-tenths offset.

"So I just felt we could have potentially worked together to go for a big result in the end, and the second lap was the quickest anyway, but sometimes you've got to put it all on the line if you want to get those big results.

"We managed to get to Q3 only on two sets of tyres, so I've got a new soft tyre for the race, and it is a valid race tyre, so it is a positive, but we are realistic."