Russell describes Mercedes crash: "Should never happen"

George Russell and Lewis Hamilton provided one of the strangest moments of the 2023 Formula 1 season. The two Mercedes drivers clashed going down the home straight and left Hamilton with a broken front wing. 

In Q2, it looked like both Mercedes drivers were about start a hot lap. Hamilton picked up a slipstream and accelerated towards his teammate. Russell drifted to the right, and Hamilton tried to overtake on the left side. Russell then moved back to the left and the two cars touched. The younger British driver explained the collision from his point of view. 

"Yeah, just massive miscommunication. I was just looking ahead, trying to get the slipstream from Carlos, and next thing Hamilton was there. So, yeah, we need to talk internally how that happened because between two teammates, it should never happen. But nothing wasn't either one's fault. I think Lewis probably just didn't know that I was starting a lap too," Russell told GPblog and others in Barcelona. 

Poor qualifying for Russell

Russell struggled throughout the session and couldn't get the best out of the car. Whilst Hamilton was often seen towards the top of the leaderboard, Russell had to fight hard. Russell went on to describe these issues. 

"Well, the car wasn't feeling OK every single lap of the session. We made some small changes from FP3 to Quali. The car was bouncing a lot in the high-speed corners,  the corners that were flat, easy in practice, I couldn't take flat, and couldn't get the tyres working. It kind of all went wrong. So from the first lap in Q1, I knew we weren't going to be having a good day. It was strange," Russell added.