George Russell crossed the line in third for the F1 Hungarian GP, achieving his sixth podium so far in 2025. The British driver qualified in fourth but managed to overtake Charles Leclerc, who was struggling with his car by the end of the race.
After the race, Russell shared his thoughts on his battles throughout the Hungarian GP and whether he expected such a strong result prior to the weekend.
Mercedes revert on philosophy
Russell has been on the podium for just under half of the 2025 Formula 1 season so far. Prior to the Hungarian GP, the Mercedes driver was on a three race streak without podium finishes.
Speaking after the race, he shared his thoughts on his strong result in Hungary.
“It’s good to be back on the podium. It’s obviously been a challenging run of form for us as a team these last six or so races, so it’s a great way to enter the break.”
When asked how he was able to achieve this result, Russell shared that the team was going back to its car philosophy earlier on in the season as they ditched a rear suspension update.
“We reverted on some of the items we brought. Early in the season we brought a new rear suspension that clearly wasn’t performing as we’d have hoped.”
He then went on to share how the result of the 2025 F1 Hungarian GP reflected that it was a unique challenge for all the drivers.
“But it was also a pretty unique weekend. You see the results by McLaren, and it was quite an unusual finishing order from P3 down. Obviously, Max was quite out of position. The Astons had a really strong race weekend as well. So, I don’t think we should get carried away with the result. But, clearly, in terms of pace, it was our best race of the season bar Canada.”
Reaction to the incident with Leclerc
In the closing ten laps of the F1 Hungarian GP, Russell was keen to overtake Leclerc for the final podium position. However, this was not an easy battle for the Mercedes driver, who was complaining about Leclerc moving under braking.
The Ferrari driver received a five-second time penalty for an incident with Russell on Lap 62. Russell reacted to the incident and whether he believed that Leclerc deserved the penalty.
“When you’re coming down the straight at 330kph and you sort of dive into the corner, you’re right on the limit of your car’s grip. You can’t just brake and turn to avoid somebody because you’re already at the limit of that grip. So, I made my intentions really clear, diving to the inside, and he moved after he had committed to braking, which is not allowed in the rules because of that reason. So, he did it once. I wasn’t happy about it.
“Second time, I was like, well, I’m going to just send it down the inside now, and he did it again, and we made contact. I was glad to get by. But I think when you watch it on TV, you think, “Oh, why can’t you just turn to avoid it?” But as I said, you are right on the limit of the car’s potential.”
