George Russell admits it was a shock for Mercedes to battle 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 high 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 levels.
“An actual shock, actually fighting tire overheating,” Russell stated. “I used to be holding on to the entrance two at first simply by a thread after which the second stint I used to be pushing so arduous to stick with them and out of the blue my tires received 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 assume we couldn’t actually seize the truth that possibly 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 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 arduous to try to discover extra efficiency.”
Russell needs Mercedes to match the previous two races to achieve a greater understanding of why it discovered the going so troublesome in Jeddah, however he additionally believes the automobile remains 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 in all probability greater than double than final 12 months,” he stated. “I don’t suppose 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 residence in P5. That’s a optimistic.
“However we’re, after all, 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 may have the tempo, we’re simply choosing up these factors, and that may be a optimistic. However we have to discover some efficiency and discover it fast.”
