At the Miami Grand Prix, George Russell and teammate Lewis Hamilton finished fifth and sixth respectively, placing best of the rest behind the untouchables Red Bull and Ferrari.
The Mercedes duo seemed to have made a big step forward in practice on Friday, but expectations faded as the weekend progressed. Despite this, Russell remains convinced that performance is hidden in the car.
“Yeah, it’s there, we just have to unlock it. I think we still don’t understand why the car is so unpredictable. Toto [Wolff] often uses the word ‘diva,’ but I think that’s an understatement. When it starts to bounce off corners, it’s a disaster to drive.
The young Briton added that the team was puzzled by the drop in pace of the W13 after a great Friday in Miami, in which they even led FP2. “We’ve always said our car is fast. But Friday was very strange, we really didn’t understand why we were that fast.
“Obviously Lewis did a better job than me [on Saturday], he was up to sixth on the grid, but even with fuel and power in correlation, his fastest laps were also on Friday, after the other drivers. They improved by more than a second.
“My race pace was two tenths slower than Charles Leclerc on Friday, and today I was half a second or a second apart per lap, so I don’t know what happened. I’d like to give you an answer, to be honest.”
“We have the best engineers on the grid working day and night to try to figure it out, but we don’t have a clear answer yet, so we have to keep looking at everything, and I have a feeling this weekend could be one of the biggest. to finally be able to figure out the right path to start our season.
Referring to the result achieved in the Miami Grand Prix, Russell recognized for now, being fifth and sixth is a very good result for Mercedes, given the state of form of the two teams that lead the hierarchical order of the Formula 1 grid. in 2022.
“I think fifth and sixth is where we deserve to be. Obviously we probably underperformed at some circuits, especially on Saturday, which makes things difficult for us for the race. This weekend we showed a progression, but we are still far “.
“We have a fast car. You just have to look at the data from Friday and compare it to Sunday and Saturday to see the differences. But it’s strange, this category is sometimes fun, and these new cars are definitely a challenge.” the new Mercedes driver.
