Russ🎶ell finished the second race at the Red Bull Ring in 11th, losing out to Fernand🌳o Alonso in the closing laps.

The Mercedes-linked dℱriver was involved in a titanic battle with Alonꩲso, holding him off until four laps to go. 

Russell had started the race from eighth but dropped to 12th a�🎃�fter the opening lap. 

He says being forced to avoid AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda on Lap 1 was the reason he fell down the order🅰.

“It was pretty worrying at th♈e start; I felt like we had a bit of a problem,” Russell said. We still need to investigate. We’ve got a little idea where that came from and then made a good start but unfortunately [Yuki] Tsunoda jolted in front of me – I think he had a big lockup and had to avoid a big incident which really compromised 👍me and made me lose two or three positions. 

“But ne𒊎vertheless, that did not change the race result.”

Russel🌊l admitted Alonso getting past was inevitable given Alpine’s superior performance across the Austrian GP weekend. 

“We did a good strategy, [I] drove my heart out, but if you could choose to have any driver behind you in a situation like that, you wouldn’t choose Fernando, 🍸and he had the pace 𝓰for the top five yesterday,” Russell added.

“So keeping a guy like Fernando, who had the pace for the top five behind, was nigh-on imposs💧ible but I definitely gave it a shot and yes: so close yet so far.”

During his time with Williams, Russell has often spent races running a♑round by himself at the back of the grid.

He believes his fight with A🎉lonso was ‘one of𒉰 his first real battles’ in F1.

“Positives: Q3. Positives: P11, so close to the top 10, and personally that’s probably one of my first real battles on track, and it felt like I held my own and didn’t make any silly mistakes,”  he explained. “I’ve been in F1 three years now but one of those years I was driving around completely on my own. Last year was a little bit of the same, so you know, that was pretty nice to have a battle l🐟ike that and especially with a guy like Fernando.”