George Russell claims that contemporary F1 is merely a case of who makes it to Turn 1 first.

"Right now in F1 it's a race to Turn 1," the Mercedes driver told Sky Sports following Sunday's United States GP. "There's no tyre degradation, there's only three-tenths between the quickest car and the slowest car in the top six.

"Normally, you need at least half a second to overtake," he added, "so if I came out of Turn 1 in P3, I'd have been on the podium today. But instead I came out in P6 and I finished P6."

Ignoring the fact that there were no complaints from Russell after leading the field into Turn 1 from pole in Canada and Singapore, going on to win both races, his claim is supported by the fact that 13 of this year's races thus far have been won from pole. However, the fact is that this is the whole point of the coveted position.

Despite the various attempts to create the sort of constant wheel-to-wheel battles usually only seen in TV trailers for the races, the fact is that the sport's reliance on aero makes this almost impossible.

Tyres have also been blamed, but the fact is that while the likes of Pirelli could - indeed can - provide tyres that last the full race, they are forced instead to provide rubber that deliberately degrades thereby creating the need for pit stops, further spice added by the provision of different compounds.

Russell feels that it is wrong to blame Pirelli.

"Pirelli get a hard time, no matter what," he said. "When there's lots of degradation, people say it's not real, the drivers can't push when we have to manage, then we don't like it when there's no tyre degradation, we say it's a boring race.

"They don't seem to be able to win in any case, so realistically you want a tyre that you can push full gas, but it doesn't go the whole race If you could choose the tyre, it's a tyre you can go flat out, but after 15 laps it falls off a cliff and you have to do a two or three-stop race.

"Ideally, the soft tyre does 12 laps, the medium tyre does 15 laps and the hard tyre does 20 laps and then it falls off the cliff. But that is a lot easier said than done," he admitted.

"Pirelli get a very hard time, they do their best, they have given us a substantially better tyre, like this tyre is very good, but it causes bad racing."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Superbird70, 2 minutes ago

"Maybe reverse grids would cheer George up."

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2. Posted by Max Noble, 3 hours ago

"I’d have won if it were not for those in front of me! Yup, classic line from silver medal down…

If we re-ignite a tyre war we’d get real racing. If we built tracks where exceeding track limits would doom your lap time, but not kill you, we could forget track limit issues. What to do…?
"

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F1 merely a race to Turn 1, says Russell

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