George Russell was left feeling frustrated after the French Grand Prix by the fact that he again finished outside of the points. The Williams driver had his best result of the season so far at Paul Ricard, having ended the race in 12th place. Whilst Russell felt happy with his strong performance - which saw him finish ahead of several cars he had qualified behind, including Charles Leclerc's Ferrari - he was left ruing that the lack of retirements in the Grand Prix meant he was unable to benefit from cars ahead dropping out. "It’s just so frustrating, every time we have a good race there’s never any retirements or incident or anything," Russell told RacingNews365.com and other select media. "This has happened I think three times now where we’ve finished 12th or something and we’ve had a really strong race. But it’ll come, I’m just really happy with how things panned out." Russell credited his team with enabling him to manage the tyres well during the race, given that many drivers struggled with tyre degradation. "It was a very well-managed race with the tyres," the 23-year-old explained. "It was incredibly difficult to balance between not going too quick and graining the tyre and not going too slow and losing the temperature. "And we did a really good job. I was really confident in the car. To beat the Alfas [Alfa Romeos], overtaking [Yuki] Tsunoda on track to get ahead - we don’t normally do this." Williams may not have earned any points but Russell's result helped them to move ahead of Haas to take ninth place in the Constructors' Standings. "I had this in the back of my mind," Russell said. "If we’re not in the points we need to focus on getting that P9 back in the championship. "I mean, we obviously don’t know if Haas will score points this year or not, but it’s making sure we finish as high as possible so we beat them even if we’re on zero points. "P12 today, back in P9 in the constructors, this is very important for the team."
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