George Russell admits it was a shock for Mercedes to wrestle with tire overheating within the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after such a persistently aggressive begin to the season.
Mercedes has been within the combine for a podium on the majority of races this 12 months, with Russell’s fifth place in Japan his solely failure to complete within the prime three till Sunday’s race in Jeddah. Once more ending fifth, Russell was practically half a minute behind Oscar Piastri and was caught out by a very extreme lack of tempo within the closing phases.
“An actual shock, actually battling tire overheating,” Russell stated. “I used to be holding on to the entrance two at the start simply by a thread after which the second stint I used to be pushing so laborious to stick with them and immediately my tires acquired means too scorching and I dropped off the cliff and I used to be shedding a second a lap within the final seven, eight laps.
“So P5 is the place we deserve to complete however the efficiency was fairly underwhelming.
“This weekend was trying actually robust. We did no laps in observe in the long term so I suppose we couldn’t actually seize the truth that possibly we weren’t on the tempo, or we couldn’t seize what the potential issues have been going to be.
“So it’s attention-grabbing, we didn’t anticipate to be so good in Bahrain and we anticipated to be stronger right here and it turned out to be the other. That’s the character of this sport and everybody’s working laborious to attempt to discover extra efficiency.”
Russell needs Mercedes to match the previous two races to realize a greater understanding of why it discovered the going so troublesome in Jeddah, however he additionally believes the automotive continues to be missing the outright efficiency wanted to be within the body for victories.
“We’re, as a group, on double the factors of final 12 months, and myself most likely greater than double than final 12 months,” he stated. “I don’t assume we may have achieved a greater end result at any of the races we’ve been to. [Sunday] was a nasty day, and we got here house in P5. That’s a constructive.
“However we’re, after all, not content material with that. We do need to be preventing for wins, however proper now we don’t have the tempo to take action. However in these moments when you will have the tempo, we’re simply selecting up these factors, and that could be a constructive. However we have to discover some efficiency and discover it fast.”
