George Russell refutes Lewis Hamilton’s Chinese GP set-up claim

George Russell has seemingly contradicted his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton’s claim about the set-up of his car at the F1 Chinese Grand Prix.

After qualifying only 18th, seven-time world champion Hamilton said he had made “massive” set-up changes to his Mercedes after finishing second to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the sprint race.

But Russell, who took eighth, says the two Mercedes drivers are running “pretty similar” set-ups on their cars in Shanghai.

“We're pretty similar on the setups, we both went in a similar direction, but there’s a small difference,” Russell said.

“Directionally very, very similar between the two of us but we both made big changes from the sprint race.

“If we optimised everything this weekend, maybe we would have finished P3, P4, P5 in qualifying. But we still wouldn't be content with that.

“We want to fight for victories and championships in hopefully the minimum next year. Sometimes need to sacrifice in the short term to make some greater gains down the line.

“We are still trying to find the development path we need to be on to make some big steps. That’s just where we are at the moment.”

Asked if he was surprised by Hamilton’s poor qualifying result, Russell replied: “Of course, surprised to see where Lewis ended up.

“He’s the greatest driver of all time and that’s not where he should be, it’s not where we should be fighting.

“We're here together as a team. Collectively, we just need to keep on pushing forward and try and make some big gains as the season goes on.”

Hamilton said: "It was not my best qualifying lap. We made massive changes going into qualifying, just wanted to experiment.

"George decided to go one way, much different to what he had and I went this other direction to just see if we could find something. It didn't feel terrible, just I couldn't stop the car in Turn 14.

"I went that way and I don't know whether it’s the right one."