George Russell had a good look at the rear of Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin, because he was annoyed that he could not get past it. Once again, things did not go smoothly for Mercedes, and the Briton emphasizes that they really need to find some more performance. Andrew Shovlin also indicates that the performance was not very good.
It became clear to Mercedes on Friday that it was going to be a difficult race. Lewis Hamilton qualified only ninth, and Russell seventh. The race day turned out to be tough indeed, and Hamilton was also deeply dissatisfied. The Silver Arrows eventually managed to score points, but finished forty seconds behind Red Bull Racing. ‘It was a long evening. I completed almost forty laps within 1.5 seconds of Alonso but couldn’t get past him,” Russell said in a Mercedes press release. “My car was sliding on the straights, but I couldn’t get close enough in the fast corners to really put pressure on it.”
In the opinion of the driver from Kings Lynn, it was clear that P6 was the best result they could get from this race. ‘In general, however, we need to find a bit more performance. We saw potential and speed in the car, but we didn’t show it when it mattered. We need to understand why that is the case and improve for Melbourne,” Russell explained. ‘As we have seen, the pecking order behind the Red Bulls is very close, so we have to be on top of it. There is a lot of work to do, but I believe in the team.” Hamilton made the same comment, although he expressed more disappointment because this is already the third year that Mercedes has not got things in order.
Text continues below the photo.
Shovlin: ‘All in all a frustrating weekend’
Shovlin, trackside engineering director, agreed with Russell’s words. He also thought it was a disappointing weekend. ‘We didn’t perform well this weekend. Our high-speed performance was poor, and the car bounces in those corners,” Shovlin summed up. ‘That contributed to our poor qualifying, but also meant we couldn’t challenge Aston Martin and the McLarens in the race. We lost so much time in sector one that we had to fight back for the rest of the lap.”
It is clear that Mercedes is disappointed, but it was said that the first two tracks of the 2024 calendar were quite unique. That should be positive for the upcoming circuits. “We’ll have to work hard between now and Melbourne to improve. The circuits are similar and we don’t want another weekend like this,” said the Brit. ‘All in all it was a very frustrating weekend but ultimately one of our own making. We’ve seen flashes of strong performances, but it hasn’t been easy to get the set-up in the right place and we clearly still have some weaknesses that need to be ironed out.”
