George Russell admits it was a shock for Mercedes to battle with tire overheating within the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after such a constantly aggressive begin to the season.
Mercedes has been within the combine for a podium on the majority of races this yr, with Russell’s fifth place in Japan his solely failure to complete within the high three till Sunday’s race in Jeddah. Once more ending fifth, Russell was almost 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 scuffling with tire overheating,” Russell stated. “I used to be holding on to the entrance two originally simply by a thread after which the second stint I used to be pushing so laborious to stick with them and abruptly my tires bought method too sizzling 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 sturdy. We did no laps in apply in the long term so I suppose we couldn’t actually seize the truth that perhaps we weren’t on the tempo, or we couldn’t seize what the potential issues had been going to be.
“So it’s attention-grabbing, we didn’t count on to be so good in Bahrain and we anticipated to be stronger right here and it turned out to be the alternative. That’s the character of this sport and everybody’s working laborious to attempt to discover extra efficiency.”
Russell desires Mercedes to match the previous two races to achieve a greater understanding of why it discovered the going so tough in Jeddah, however he additionally believes the automobile continues to be missing the outright efficiency wanted to be within the body for victories.
“We’re, as a crew, on double the factors of final yr, and myself most likely greater than double than final yr,” he stated. “I don’t suppose we may have achieved a greater outcome at any of the races we’ve been to. [Sunday] was a nasty day, and we got here residence in P5. That’s a optimistic.
“However we’re, in fact, not content material with that. We do need to be combating for wins, however proper now we don’t have the tempo to take action. However in these moments when you’ve got the tempo, we’re simply selecting up these factors, and that may be a optimistic. However we have to discover some efficiency and discover it fast.”
