Pirelli had talks with Russell after criticism

Pirelli’s F1 boss sought out George Russell for a chat over the Singapore GP weekend.

A week ago, the Mercedes driver slammed the inconsistency of the tyres in Formula 1 today, claiming even Pirelli "don’t understand them" and denouncing the product as "not good enough".

"I always talk to the drivers because it’s useful to understand better," Mario Isola, Pirelli’s F1 chief, is quoted by France’s Auto Hebdo.

"Obviously, in the heat of the moment after the (Baku) race, George had some things to say and we talked together. But looking at the data from all the cars in Baku, we didn’t find anything strange in terms of tyre performance."

The Italian said he thinks Russell might be misunderstanding why the performance of his car was so different from one set of tyres to the next.

"There are a lot of elements that contribute to performance," said Isola. "The setup of the car, how gently you use the tyre in the early laps, the evolution of the track.

"In a championship where every thousandth of a second counts in the final result, the stress is obviously very high and a small difference in performance can play a role.

"But we should look specifically at what happened to Mercedes, even if we are used to doing these analyses that concern all of the teams."