Mercedes’ George Russell Left Baffled by Loss of Pace in Dutch Grand Prix
Formula 1 news today reveals that Mercedes driver George Russell is still trying to make sense of his disappointing performance at the Dutch Grand Prix, where he finished seventh after qualifying in fourth place. The 26-year-old Briton had looked strong all weekend, but struggled for pace during the race, eventually crossing the finish line one spot ahead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Russell conceded that he was “left scratching his head” after going backwards in the race, saying, > “We just had no pace. I was just dropping like a stone – especially quite surprised versus Ferrari. We were expecting to be comfortably ahead of them, and Charles [Leclerc] was quicker, Carlos [Sainz] was catching me. Clearly, we got something wrong with the tyres.”
The Mercedes driver was perplexed by the sudden loss of performance, having come into the weekend on the back of a strong outing at the Belgian Grand Prix, where he was denied victory due to his car being disqualified for being underweight. Russell reflected, > “After the first couple of laps I thought we were on course for a podium here, I knew the overtaking was going to be difficult. I was really shocked at how fast McLaren was. Lando [Norris] just looked so comfortable out there, super impressive to see, but we’ve had six really strong races and then suddenly we’ve finished almost a minute behind the win, so you don’t lose all of that performance overnight.”
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton rued the cost of his three-place grid penalty, imposed for blocking Sergio Perez, saying that it prevented him from a shot at the podium. The seven-time world champion commented, > “I had a lot of fun today. We planned to do a two-stop, started on the soft – the soft tyre was a very good tyre, it felt much better than the medium tyre in practice. The hard tyre was pretty decent, it was difficult to see what I needed to do.”
Hamilton believed that without his grid penalty, he would have had a better result, stating, > “Yes, definitely, If I just qualified like I should have qualified. If I didn’t have the problem in qualifying then yes. I think I had the pace today to be in the top five – if I started fourth for example I would’ve finished at least fourth.”
In other Formula 1 news, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has confirmed that Antonelli will participate in FP1 at Monza, ruling out a cameo appearance for Williams.
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