Russell Shines At Post Season Testing In Abu Dhabu As LeClerc Crashes

George Russell made the most of his latest opportunity with Mercedes by topping the final day of post-testing in Abu Dhabi. Charles LeClerc, on the other hand, crashed his car.

The Williams driver took over the Mercedes from Valtteri Bottas for the second day of post-season testing and managed to outpace LeClerc by two-tenths of a second.

The rookie had been a Mercedes protégé for several years, and it showed that day, lapping a tenth second slower than Bottas’s benchmark on Tuesday. He utilized the 2020 C5 tires, which are Pirelli’s current softest compound.

The time Bottas set was based on the 2019 C4 tire.

Mercedes had insisted during the Grand Prix weekend that the latest test by Russell was not a direct comparison with Bottas, though.

It is worth considering that Bottas’ contract is set to end after the 2020 season.

Russell’s effort was more than three seconds quicker than the lap he did with his Williams.

LeClerc, on the other hand, had a bad day, causing the only red flag of the test when he crashed at Turn 13. It caused a 25-minute delay while his car was recovered to the pits.

He slid wide and caused enough damage to prevent him from resuming at the track, thus ending Ferrari’s running two hours early that day.

LeClerc had already done more than 100 laps before the incident. He registered the second-fastest time overall with 1 minute 37.401 seconds.

It was just half a second quicker than what his teammate Sebastian Vettel managed on Tuesday, but 0.2 seconds slower than Russell.

Lance Stroll came in third place for Racing Point with 1 minute 37.99seconds, but he was also involved in an incident at the beginning with Carlos Sainz Jr. of McClaren.

Stroll began slowly down the pit lane ahead of Sainz, and the McLaren driver was keen to get past, so he pulled inside to overtake.

Sainz forgot to factor the added space required as he was carrying an aero rake as well.

He damaged the rake against Stroll’s car, which significantly limited his running that day. Sainz was still able to complete over 100 laps.

Pierre Gasly came in fourth for Toro Rosso and was the last driver to lap within a second of Russell. Sainz was fifth.

Ocon, who is going to rejoin the Formula 1 grid next season with Renault, came in the sixth position.

Pierro Fittipaldi reprised the Haas testing role and came in eighth with the 2019 C5 tires.