George Russell: “If we want to sustain this position in the championship, we need to find more pace”

Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team’s, George Russell, continued his streak of top five finishes with a fourth-place result at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Having started from eleventh place, Russell’s great start in the wet saw him move up to fifth within the race’s opening stages. With Charles Leclerc spinning off the track late in the race, he was promoted to fourth and defended the position against Valtteri Bottas until the checkered flag.

The British driver was pleased with the result, but felt that some luck was involved– likely related to the incidents and retirements that benefitted his position– and that there is still a lot of performance to be found.

“I’m relatively pleased to maximise the points available this weekend. Whether we’re getting the most out of the car is a different story and I do think things have fallen slightly in our favour with these first four races.

“I’m really happy with this P4, but if we want to sustain this position in the championship, we need to find more pace. We’ve got these overall limitations with the car with the bouncing, and we know that we are struggling with the tyre warm up and this is the coldest race weekend we’ve had by far this year.” 

A pattern Russell has noticed since the beginning of the season is the impact on temperature on the performance of Mercedes and their competitors. When it comes to Qualifying, the colder temperatures have hindered Mercedes’ abilities, while other mid-field contenders have fared better. 

“I think it’s been a bit of a trend since Bahrain, we’ve progressively gotten a bit slower in qualifying, and I think that’s because Bahrain is the hottest we’ve experienced so there was no problem with tyre warm up. Then we [went] to Jeddah, and it was still hot, but the track was a bit smoother.

“Melbourne, a bit cooler. Here, very cold. And that’s when you see the McLarens, Alpines, and Haases coming into their own but then struggling a bit more in the race. We need to find a better compromise because we were fortunate today, we had a decent result, but ultimately, we were starting far too low on the grid.”

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.” – Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton’s weekend was one to “forget”, with the Mercedes driver earning no points at the Sprint weekend. Finishing in thirteenth-place, Hamilton struggled to make up positions from his starting spot of fourteenth, as he lost time with a slow stop and ended up caught in a DRS train that hindered his progress. 

“This was a weekend to forget, that’s for sure. Behind Gasly, we both had DRS so it was impossible to overtake, and I lost a few places in the pit stop. This weekend, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.”

Hamilton, dejected by the result, said that he looks to go into the Miami Grand Prix with an optimistic mindset. With team-mate Russell three places ahead of Hamilton in the Drivers’ standings, he will be looking to recover points to bring himself back up to par and ensure Mercedes will be able to solidify their position of third in the Constructors’ championship. 

“We live and we learn, and there’s not much else to say. I’ll keep working as hard as I can to try and pull it back together, somehow. I hope for a better weekend in Miami, it will be difficult but I’ll try and get myself in a positive headspace for the next one.”