Wolff says Russell's aborted lap would have been second

George Russell was angry that Mercedes told him to abandon a lap in Q3 which he believed would have been the quickest. Race engineer Marcus Dudley instructed him to stop the lap, expecting track conditions to keep improving, but they deteriorated and Russell finished second behind Lando Norris.

Russell has a five-place grid penalty and will start seventh. Team principal Toto Wolff said that Russell was the quickest through the session, but that the call was a difficult one. Wolff believes Russell would still have been second even if he had completed the lap, as he was 80 milliseconds ahead of Norris but close to Alexander Albon's Williams.