“Serious conversations” needed over Pirelli’s “infuriating” F1 tyres

George Russell raised fresh concerns over the quality of Pirelli’s Formula 1 tyres, calling their performance in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix “infuriating”.

The Mercedes driver finished the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in third place. He ran the same one-stop strategy as all of his rivals ahead, starting on the medium tyres and switching to hards for his second stint.

Russell was perplexed by the variations in his car’s performance during the race. He fell around 15 seconds off leader Charles Leclerc before his pit stop.

He then dropped up to 25 seconds behind in the second stint before gradually closing on the cars ahead. He picked up speed in the second stint and was within 15 seconds of eventual winner Oscar Piastri before the Virtual Safety Car that effectively ended the race was deployed.

“It was such an odd race,” Russell told the official F1 channel after the race.

“The first half of the race, we were 1.5 seconds off the pace. The last 20 laps, I was a second quicker than Oscar and Charles and three tenths quicker than Max, Checo and Carlos.

“It’s the same circuit, same driver, same car – we just went from a yellow tyre to a white tyre. Honestly, it is actually pretty infuriating that it changes this much. It’s not just the Mercedes, it’s every team and every driver. One session, you’re fast, the next you’re not. And there’s only one thing that changes.”

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Russell called for “serious conversations” to be had with Pirelli to address the inconsistent performance of their current F1 tyres.

“I think even the people who make the tyres don’t understand the tyres,” he said.

“I think we all need probably serious conversations again about what’s going on, because we’ve got 2,000 people working their butts off to deliver the fastest car. Twenty laps of the race, we had a car that was comfortable of fighting for victory, the twenty other laps, we had a car that probably shouldn’t have been in the points – and the only difference is the tyres. And it’s not good enough, really.”