George Russell might have out-qualified his illustrious team mate yet again in Abu Dhabi, but he couldn’t withstand Lewis Hamilton’s late attack as the two Mercedes drivers went wheel to wheel on the final lap of the final race of the season.
Hamilton pulled off a vintage overtake, hanging it out around the outside of his team mate into Turn 9 and sneaking past into Turn 10 to grab a fourth-place finish in his final race for Mercedes. The seven-time world champion had recovered from P16 after some bad luck in qualifying, running an alternate strategy that left him with plenty to do in the closing laps to chase down Russell.
That left Russell to come home fifth, after what had proved a tough weekend where he seemed to lack pace from word go, the Briton often confused as to what was going on with his car.
“To be honest, I’ve not had the pace all weekend and I was quite intrigued today to see if the pace would come, and it was as we expected,” said Russell afterwards.