George Russell finishes on the podium at the Bahrain Grand Prix

George Russell successfully executed an 'audacious' strategy to take second place and his third podium in four races on Sunday.

Russell's podium extended a run of 14 top-five finishes, a career-best for the driver from Tydd St Giles despite a weekend fraught with difficulties.

The Bahrain Grand Prix weekend started with Russell on the sidelines as he gave up his car to Frederik Vesti as part of the four mandated rookie free practice sessions a season.

In the other practice sessions - which Russell partook in - his Mercedes car failed to provide sufficient grip leading to the 27-year-old taking his vehicle for a pirouette in front of the grandstands.

Despite this, Russell placed third and fourth in the two remaining practice sessions which boded well for qualifying.

Both Mercedes cars easily made it through to the second stage of qualifying, however, running was disrupted by a red flag.

Before the resumption of the session was announced, Russell and team-mate Kimi Antonelli found themselves sent to the end of the pit lane by the team which netted them both one-place grid penalties.

In the final stage of qualifying, the Mercedes came alive and both drivers set purple sector after purple sector with Russell emerging the main benefactor of this performance qualifying second - which turned into third on the grid due to the penalty.

Starting alongside Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, Russell had a strong getaway and launched himself towards pole-sitter Oscar Piastri, however, he locked up before he had a chance of taking the lead.

Russell held position in second until the first round of pit stops where his Mercedes strategy team successfully neutralised the threat of an undercut from the other McLaren of Lando Norris before making his way back through the field.

After Russell was back in second, debris on track led to the deployment of the safety car which caused all the front-runners to dive into the pits.

For reasons unbeknownst to him, Mercedes put the number 63 car onto soft tyres for 24 laps - a strategy call which he described as 'audacious' over the team radio.

Following this move, Russell's problems continued as his car developed electrical issues which affected the braking, steering wheel data and most importantly the deployment of DRS.

DRS - the Drag Reduction System - can only be used when within a second of the car in front and on straights and its use is automatically controlled by a transponder.

Russell's transponder failed as part of his electrical issues and, as such, the DRS flap opened when he was more than four seconds behind the car in front.

To counter this, Russell closed the flap immediately and slowed down despite an ongoing battle with Norris behind, although the issue still landed him in the stewards office post-race with no penalty awarded.

While Russell was fighting electrical gremlins, he had another battle on his hands in the form of Norris’ papaya car with the fight for second place continuing until the checkered flag with Russell emerging the victor and taking his career best result in Sakhir.

Russell said: "It was a really challenging race.

"We had some problems in the last 12 laps including a brake-by-wire failure.

"When I was hitting the brakes, the pedal was inconsistent and I had to do some resets for it to work properly again.

"For 10 laps in a row, going into every corner, I didn't know whether it would give me the same feeling or not.

"It definitely compromised the race but, at the end of the day, bringing the car home in second place was mega.

"The brake-by-wire failure wasn't the only technical challenge we were dealing with either.

"There were all sorts of issues going on with the transponder and the signals going to the car. That meant that we had to manually override the DRS.

"At one point, I hit the radio button and saw that the DRS was open. I closed it immediately and lifted off the throttle so we actually gave up time. Happily, the stewards agreed that no sporting advantage was gained.

"All of those issues compromised that last stint but the main thing is we leave here with another podium and more solid points scored."

Russell’s second place finish puts him within six points of third in the standings ahead of the next race this weekend (April 18-20) in Saudi Arabia.