Saturday at the Red Bull Ring of Mercedes it was far from the expectations of the Anglo-German team, weighed down by the bad performance offered in the morning’s qualifying. A hydraulic problem had delayed George Russell, who was forced to start from the eighth row with the 15th fastest time, while Lewis Hamilton was even eliminated in SQ1 and started from the ninth row, 18th. The rain then offered the two silver arrow riders dressed in black the chance to quickly recover positions, quickly moving close to the top10.
The courageous decision to mount dry tires on the 16th of the 24 scheduled laps rewarded Russellcapable of rapidly ascending toeighth place finish and losing seventh place right at the photo finish with the Alpine of Esteban Ocon, who preceded him by just 9 thousandths. Lewis Hamilton instead finished the Sprint in tenth place, thus closing out of the points. Mercedes hope to be able to better defend the second position among the Constructors during Sunday’s race, given that they have a 5-point lead over Aston Martin and the gap over Ferrari has been reduced to +40.
Russell’s race
George Russell he analyzed his own Saturday thus: “When you’re lined up behind other cars in the wet, it’s really hard to tell if it’s the spray from the cars in front of you or if it’s actually a wet track. But I was convinced that the track was ready for the Slicks. I love these mixed conditions, I really have a lot of confidence. Had we changed the tires a couple of laps earlier, I could have finished three places up (he finished 8th, ed). For two laps I said on the radio that if it had been qualifying, I would have fitted the Slicks, but then it depends on the team. It’s up to them to decide whether or not it’s worth the risk.”
Hamilton’s analysis
Lewis Hamilton he is clearly not satisfied with tenth place: “I felt the car was quite fast this morning and I think with our pace we could have reached the top5 in both the Shootout and the Sprint, but it wasn’t meant to be. The conditions were difficult and I didn’t want to risk it the switch to the slicks came one lap too late. We lost a few points today and so we’ll focus on tomorrow’s race, where we’ll start in a better position.”
The words of Toto Wolff
The team principal Toto Wolff commented as follows: “We had a very unfortunate Shootout with Lewis in P18 and George in P15 though both drivers confirmed that the car was better today thanks to the set-up changes andperformed during the night. The goal was to make up ground in the Sprint and the team made a perfect choice, putting George on the slicks at the right time. We had nothing to lose at that point and so the choice was brilliant. George fought to get back up to P8 and finished just a few thousandths behind Ocon. Lewis struggled more to warm up the tires and stopped one lap later. We learned a lot today and the pace of the car looked good, so we’re looking forward to tomorrow’s race.”
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