(Reuters) – Briton George Russell said natural instinct drove him to jump out of his Mercedes to check on Chinese racer Guanyu Zhou after a crash on the opening lap of last week’s British Grand Prix left the Formula One rookie trapped upside down in his Alfa Romeo.
Russell ricocheted into Zhou’s car after contact with Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri at the start.
The collision flipped the Alfa Romeo on to its roll-hoop, with the car scraping along the track upside down before tipping into a barrel roll that launched it over the barriers and into the gap between the catch fencing and the tyre wall.
The race was immediately halted and Russell jumped out to check on Zhou.
“It was just a horrifying accident and I saw it was a red flag,” Russell told reporters on Thursday at the Austrian Grand Prix.
“I thought my car was broken so for me it was just sort of a natural reaction,” added the 24-year-old, who is a director of the drivers’ union GPDA.
Zhou escaped the crash unscathed and is fit to race this weekend in Austria.
Sunday’s race was not the first time that Russell, who urged Formula One to learn lessons from the crash, had rushed to the aid of a fellow competitor.
IndyCar racer Callum Ilott, in a tweet on Sunday, recalled the time Russell had lifted his go-kart off him after the Briton ended up upside down.
Russell said he himself had received help from a fellow competitor when he rolled his go-kart in 2008.
“To be honest this hasn’t gone through my thought process whatsoever during any of these incidents, I’m just actually thinking about it now.
“I rolled in 2008 and I was trapped under the kart and I was actually burning my arm because the exhaust was stuck on top of me and this other driver stopped to lift the kart off me.”
Russell’s decision to check on Zhou cost him the chance to take the restart, dashing his hopes of chalking up a strong home showing in a much improved Mercedes, which team mate Lewis Hamilton drove to third.
“That just added to the emotions of the frustrations because we definitely could have got going again and probably could have scored a strong result,” he said.
(Reporting by Abhishek Takle in Mumbai; editing by Clare Fallon)
