More competitive yes, but so much is a surprise. In Mercedes the weekend in Zandvoort could be the perfect medicine after the Spa beating just like for Ferrari. The W13s of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finished first and second in the first free practice session – a ‘double’ that Brackley’s team hadn’t scored since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – and also in the second. performance was encouraging although Ferrari took over.
George Russell was faster in the first sector than Lewis Hamilton and there is a technical reason that can explain this trend. The incident at Spa on the first lap with Fernando Alonso – 45G impact – made the power unit ‘3’ unusable for Lewis Hamilton, who therefore had to return to ‘2’ in the Netherlands. Russell therefore has a great chance to replicate an acute as happened in Hungary where he hit pole position even though he stressed that at the moment the front row seems very difficult to snatch.
Russell is counting on the fact that in the race the Mercedes will be even more competitive than in Qualifying, but a year ago he was really flying with the Williams before going off the track in the last two corners after hitting the grass and the gravel and losing the rear. . Lewis Hamilton, for his part, stopped only at 38 thousandths from a pole position that seemed unattainable and which was suddenly almost within reach also due to the DRS problem that Max Verstappen had in the best lap of Q3.
But why is Mercedes more competitive than expected? Because Zandvoort has a range of curves that are not so different from each other and therefore it is easier to set an effective set-up since you don’t have to find too many compromises. “A car that is only fast in a narrow set-up window drives with more compromises than a versatile car on tracks with a wide spectrum of corner types. – said Mercedes engineers questioned by the German newspaper Auto Motor und Sport – we are currently on par with Red Bull and Ferrari“.
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