George Russell felt "lucky" to finish the Qatar sprint after twice feeling he was cut up by Oscar Piastri.
Starting from second on the grid, Mercedes driver Russell was passed by McLaren's Piastri out of Turn 1 on the opening lap.
On two occasions in the 19-lap race, Russell attempted to pass Piastri into the opening corner, only for the Australian to close the door aggressively.
Russell turned to the radio on both occasions to bemoan Piastri's defending, noting on the first occasion that he "just turned in on me". He also used an expletive to further underline his anger, and did so again second time around.
Russell had to settle for third at the chequered flag, after which he was left to assess Piastri's tactics.
"I need to see what it looked like from the outside," said Russell.
"Obviously we went wheel to wheel into Turn 1. On one of the laps I was on the inside, and he [Piastri] closed me off pretty aggressively, we made contact. We were both lucky to stay in the race.
"A few laps later I committed to the inside, and he cut across pretty late. When you're doing 320 [kph], 330 into Turn 1, there's a big difference and you close the door, it's pretty sketchy."
Russell found himself at the mercy of leader Norris for all but the final 100 metres of the sprint after his fellow Briton opted to slow at the death and hand the victory to team-mate Oscar Piastri as payback for the position reversal in the previous sprint in Brazil.
Norris was able to control his pace at the front to keep Piastri in DRS range to help fend off Russell's attacks.
Russell, though, is confident he has the pace in his Mercedes to battle the McLaren pair in the grand prix.
"I take a lot of positives from the result because if Lando had been playing right I could have got past Oscar and I could have had a good fight with Lando," said Russell.
Most read
In this article
Join the conversation!