Lewis Hamilton managed to beat both Aston Martins in qualifying, which is definitely good news. Worse, however, is that Fernando Alonso has now been perfectly replaced by another Mercedes customer: Lando Norris from McLaren. The Silver Arrow pilots are searching for the reason that led to their downfall, but so far without tangible conclusions.
At the Red Bull Ring, hundredths of a second have traditionally been decisive, and this time also track limits. Since George Russell finished eleventh, we might wonder if crossing the white line was to blame. If we did, we would quickly find out that Brit’s exit was no accident. The commissioners deleted his time of 1:05.408, which was better than his final performance, but it would not be enough to overcome Alex Albon.
So Mercedes has nothing to say. What does he say about his eleventh place George Russell? “We simply weren’t fast enough today. I didn’t have a good feeling about the car from the first practice round. It’s not easy during a sprint weekend because you don’t have time to make any changes. We’ll see if we can come up with something during the night.”
During the night, the silver arrows will have their hands tied, as the cars are already in the parc fermé. However, the belief that they will still manage to come up with something lives on. The flame of hope is mainly fanned by memories of Azerbaijan.
“I start eleventh, which is not the best. This year we have already got several good results after starting from lower positions, so nothing is lost yet. In training, the durability of the tires looked quite bad, so we are probably waiting for a two-stop race. But we have to understand what is actually happening,” he insisted Russell. “We are a bit worried, especially on Saturday.”
“I think I qualified eleventh on Friday in Baku, but on Saturday I finished fourth. Unfortunately, we won’t get as many points out of it in this order, but I think we will get more in the race than in Baku. It won’t be easy, but it will be a long race on Sunday.” added the winner of last year’s WC Brazil.
Years Lewis Hamilton he didn’t show much positive emotion after Friday, even though he finished fifth. His initial reaction to the journalist’s question, which could be translated as “meh”, said enough about his assessment. “It’s not first place, but I’ll take it and try to work with it.”
Although qualifying did not go as expected, the race could have been better. Unless… “I think we were the third fastest in terms of race speed. Red Bulls and Ferraris were the fastest, and maybe Aston Martins too. So maybe we’re only fourth,” the seven-time champion corrected himself. “I’m not exactly sure, today we tried to ride one lap. It was a challenging day and this circuit is not easy, nor has it suited our single-seater in the past. Today it was shown again. A difficult qualification, but thank God we managed it.”
“We will try to perform better in Saturday’s sprint qualifying, but it will depend on the weather and temperatures,” he thought at the end. He concluded his interview in a positive spirit. “Fifth place is nice. Last year I started here from a lower position and it was a difficult race, so maybe we will have a better Sunday.”
2023-06-30 19:31:25
#Mercedes #lost #speed #understand #Russell #Magazine #F1online.sk
