'We had a car to win the 2022 F1 Singapore GP' fumes Mercedes' George Russell after poor finish

Mercedes driver George Russell was despondent that the team had a car capable of fighting for a win this weekend. Russell had a rather below-par weekend where he first struggled in qualifying and was eliminated in Q2. Then a pitlane start (for a power unit change) meant that the driver had a tough time making his way through the field.

George Russell was also involved in two incidents. First, he damaged the front wing of Valtteri Bottas' Alfa Romeo, and then he caused a puncture to Mick Schumacher.

Russell ultimately finished the race outside of points. Talking to the media after the race, he was despondent as he felt a win was possible for the team this weekend. The Mercedes driver said:

“Pleased the issues from yesterday in FP1 had been resolved, and I guess a bit of confidence restored that I haven’t lost it and I didn’t qualify three seconds off the pace due to a lack of talent or whatever. But such a shame, we had a car to win this week.”

The Mercedes driver elaborated on how the team wanted to win races and not settle for anything else. He said:

“We are making loads of progress as a team that I’m proud about. We are here to win races. Points are always great, we’ve had a very good run of results and this is probably the first weekend as a team, bar Silverstone, that we slipped up, myself included.”

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We rolled the dice in George's race: Mercedes boss

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was in a rather solemn mood after the race. The Austrian explained how the team gambled with slicks on George Russell's car, which ultimately backfired. He said:

"For George, we rolled the dice on dry tyres when he was running out of the points. In hindsight, it was clearly too early, but he had nothing to lose, so we were prepared to take the gamble."

He further added:

"The biggest frustration today is that we couldn't build on the signs of competitive performance we saw in FP2 and in Qualifying. Our championship fight for P2 has got significantly more difficult with this result, but the only thing to do is to collect ourselves and throw our energy into the next race in Suzuka to rebuild momentum."

Mercedes are now 66 points behind Ferrari in the championship and their hopes of overhauling the Italian squad might have diminished a bit with this result.