After a collision between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz, while fighting for third place, George Russell found himself on the podium in Baku.

Russell followed the same one-stop strategy as the drivers in front of him, starting on medium tires and switching to hard tires for his second stint. However, he was very confused by how his car's performance changed during the race.

Before his pit stop, he was about 15 seconds behind race leader Charles Leclerc. On the other hand, in the second part of the race, he fell as much as 25 seconds behind but slowly caught up to the cars ahead. He gained speed and got within 15 seconds of the eventual winner, Oscar Piastri, before a Virtual Safety Car ended the race.

Despite the podium finish, the Mercedes driver was very frustrated with the inconsistent pace of his Mercedes and shared, what he thinks was the cause of it.

“It was such an odd race,” Russell stated for the the official F1 channel.

“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.”

Russell strongly criticised Pirelli and called for ‘serious conversations’ between F1 and the tyre supplier.

“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.”

Mercedes is now fourth in the Constructor’s Championship standings, respectively last of the top teams, with 309 points, losing 116 points to third Ferrari and 167 to the new championship leader McLaren.