Russell says Las Vegas ‘dream of a weekend’

George Russell says his victory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix was “a dream of a weekend”.

Russell took a dominant win from pole position ahead of Mercedes team-mate and fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton, who fought back from 10th on the grid.

Mercedes were fastest in every session of the weekend and performed well in the cooler conditions of the Las Vegas night race, which started at 22:00 local time.

“I don’t know how we’ve been so quick but I’m just riding this wave right now,” Russell said.

“Vegas is just a crazy place and when you’re driving and you see all of this in the background, I can’t describe this place. To get victory here, pole position and a dominant weekend, one-two with Lewis as well, we couldn’t have chosen a better place to make this happen.”

It was Mercedes’ fourth win of the season but it has been an inconsistent year and they are set to finish fourth in the constructors’ championship, having been third in 2022 and second in 2023.

Russell is confident of another good result next weekend in Qatar, the penultimate race of the season.

“I think we’ve got a good shot in Qatar,” he said. “Going into this triple-header, I had my sights set on Qatar even to the point where I wanted to take my previous engine out and put an old engine in and save my best engine for Qatar.”

Seven-time world champion Hamilton looked set to put his car on pole in qualifying but made mistakes in the final session, which meant he started on the fifth row.

He came through the field and passed world champion Max Verstappen to take second before narrowing the gap to Russell in the closing stages.

Hamilton had said he “didn’t really want to come back” following a miserable race in Brazil three weeks ago but at one stage it looked like he might catch Russell in Las Vegas and challenge for the win.

“If I’d done my job yesterday it would have been a breeze today,” said Hamilton.

“If the car drives like that in the next couple of races then I think we’ll be in a good spot to challenge the guys up front. The championship’s done, so now it’s just all out, fight for the best positions possible.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said: “Today we really crushed everyone, we could have gone easily faster, at times we were two seconds quicker than everyone else.

“We seem to be very good when it’s high speed and on a bit of the chillier side with less grip and that’s something we can be proud about. But when it’s getting hot that is when the car is not performing so well.”