George Russell crashes out of the Australia Grand Prix

George Russell crashed on the last lap of the Australia Grand Prix in a 'disappointing end to a difficult race' on Sunday.

Russell recorded his second consecutive DNF (did not finish) at the Albert Park track and dropped three places in the drivers' championship.

The driver from Tydd St Giles had a strong start to the weekend having finished the opening practice session in third place, however, this form did not continue as he failed to make the top 10 in his afternoon outing.

In qualifying, Russell struggled with the soft tyre throughout but easily made it through to the second stage of qualifying.

Throughout the second session, Russell found himself on the cusp of elimination but made it through to the final stage in which he struggled with brake issues and could only manage seventh on the grid - albeit ahead of his team-mate Lewis Hamilton for the fifth consecutive race.

Russell had a strong start on the medium tyre and made up a place on Sergio Perez on the opening lap and then gained another position shortly after as the other Red Bull of Max Verstappen was forced to retire from the race.

On lap nine, Russell dived into the pits to make his first stop of the race onto the hard tyre - this dropped down the order but he soon made his way up to seventh after a nice move on Alpine's Pierre Gasly.

Russell gained a position for sixth during the virtual safety car period but shortly after he came under attack from Perez and dropped a place to seventh.

The 26-year-old held position for the majority of the race, including after his second pit stop onto another set of hard tyres, before he began to chase down Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.

Russell came within half-a-second of Alonso before the Spaniard took a slightly bizarre line through turn six which caught the Brit off guard and sent him flying into the barrier.

Half-upside-down in the middle of the track, Russell called for the race to be ended under a red flag but instead the virtual safety car was deployed.

Following the race, Alonso was given a drive-through penalty which was converted to 20 seconds for 'potentially dangerous driving' in the incident with Russell.

Russell said: "I was ok after the accident fortunately. I don’t really know how to explain what happened. I was half-a-second behind Alonso 100 metres before the corner and then suddenly he came back towards me extremely quickly.

"It was clear that he braked earlier than he had done on previous laps and then got back on the throttle. I wasn’t expecting that, and it caught me by surprise. I hit the wall and had a dramatic few seconds after that.

"It was a disappointing end to a difficult race. Our pace wasn’t where we wanted it to be. We showed spells of good lap times but ultimately we’ve got work to do to catch those ahead.

"We will be focused on how we can make improvements ahead of Japan in two weeks’ time."