Lewis Hamilton credited George Russell after his Mercedes teammate swooped to his first podium finish for the team at the Australian Grand Prix.
Sunday’s race saw the seven-time world champion grab third off the line before falling behind Sergio Perez. However, Russell was able to jump both at the first safety car before holding off his teammate late on.
“It’s a great result, this weekend we’ve had so many difficult moments with the car so to get ourselves fifth and sixth in qualifying then progress like we have, with the reliablity, we definitely didn’t expect third and fourth,” Hamilton told Sky Sports.
“George did a great job today. I got to see a bit of the battle of him racing Perez and I wish I could have been in it - but nonetheless we take the points and keep pushing.
“I couldn’t fight [Russell] for third because the engine was overheating, so I had to back off. But we’ve bagged as many points as we could as a team, so that’s great.”
Russell put himself second in the Drivers’ Championship and yet is aware that Mercedes still have an uphill battle to challenge Ferrari and Red Bull for the title.
He said: “It’s a credit to everybody back at Brackley and Brixworth - it doesn’t matter how fast your car is if you’re not there at the end to pick up the pieces.
“This weekend we were probably the fifth-fastest team behind McLaren and Alpine, yet here we are standing with P3. I only just realised I’m P2 in the Championship, which is just crazy to think [about].
“So we’ve got to be really proud of the job we’ve done so far with the lack of performance we’ve had. We believe we can get there but it’s not going to happen overnight and it will be a number of races before we close the gap.”
