{"id":8701,"date":"2020-12-06T17:05:39","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T22:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=8701"},"modified":"2020-12-06T17:05:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T22:05:39","slug":"flat-tire-costs-george-russell-chance-at-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/12\/06\/flat-tire-costs-george-russell-chance-at-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Flat tire costs George Russell chance at victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>George Russell<\/strong> took advantage of a massive opportunity and dominated, Sunday, at Bahrain. Even after a miscue by his team on pit road cost him the lead, he climbed back through the field and ate away at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/12\/06\/sergio-perez-win-bahrain-f1\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>Sergio Perez<\/strong><\/a>&#8216;s lead. It was his race to lose.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, debris punctured his left-front tire.<\/p>\n<p>He couldn&#8217;t put it into words.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u2019ve had races where I\u2019ve had victories taken away from me, but twice?&#8221; He said. &#8220;I just can\u2019t believe it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even as Russell rallied back to score his first career points finish, the sting of his lost chance at victory remained.<\/p>\n<p>Russell put on a performance reminiscent of the driver he subbed in for,\u00a0<strong>Lewis Hamilton<\/strong>. He led 58 of the 87 laps and turned the fastest lap of the race on Lap 80 (55.404 seconds).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I gave everything I had,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I was managing the race at the start. I felt confident, comfortable in the opening laps, just managing the gap to Valtteri.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Russell lost the lead under the second safety car period, <a href=\"https:\/\/racing.ap.org\/article\/perez-stays-calm-win-chaotic-sakhir-gp-1st-f1-win\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">when his team put Bottas&#8217; tires on his car<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was an incredibly late call to pit, as obviously, the safety car came out seconds before I came into the pit lane,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Obviously, we had our tires meddled up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Back to green on Lap 69, Russell powered around Bottas on the outside through Turn 6 and overtook him for fourth in Turn 7 on Lap 70. He used a DRS boost to pass\u00a0<strong>Lance Stroll<\/strong> in Turn 4 on Lap 72 and passed\u00a0<strong>Esteban Ocon<\/strong> in Turn 4 the next lap.<\/p>\n<p>Russell had significantly fresher tires than Perez, and the gap reflected it.<\/p>\n<p>By Lap 75, he cut the lead to 2.5 seconds. He was bound to catch Perez in the closing laps, if not for the puncture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, that\u2019s racing,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It\u2019s a team sport. We\u2019re all in it, together. Sometimes, a driver messes it up, and I have once or twice thus year in the Williams. Sometimes, it does get away, and\u00a0 we learn from these things.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He took solace in what a great run he had, as well as scoring his first career points.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIncredibly proud of what we have achieved and happy to have had the opportunity,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TOP IMAGE: Mark Thompson\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Russell took advantage of a massive opportunity and dominated, Sunday, at Bahrain. Even after a miscue by his team on pit road cost him the lead, he climbed back through the field and ate away at\u00a0Sergio Perez&#8216;s lead. It was his race to lose. Suddenly, debris punctured his left-front tire. He couldn&#8217;t put it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":8698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[525,1449,23,1329,1450,121,1448],"class_list":["post-8701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-formula-1","tag-2020-formula-1-season","tag-bahrain-international-circuit","tag-formula-1","tag-formula-1-2020","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","tag-sakhir-grand-prix"],"modified_by":"Tucker White","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}