George Russell admits it was a surprise that Mercedes struggled with tire overheating at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after the consistent start of the season.
Mercedes has been in the podium mix for most of the races this year, finishing fifth for Russell in Japan, failing to finish in the top three until his race in Jeddah on Sunday. Once again, Russell finished fifth, nearly 30 minutes behind Oscar Piastri and was caught up in a particularly serious loss of pace during the closure phase.
“I’m really surprised and I’m really struggling with overheating the tires,” Russell said. “I was holding the front two at the thread at first, but the second stint was really pushing me to be with them. Suddenly, the tires got so hot that I dropped the cliff and lost one in the final seven laps.
“So, P5 is where we deserve to finish, but the performance was pretty overwhelming.
“This weekend looked really strong, we didn’t actually rap in the long run, so I don’t think we really could have grasped the fact that we might not have been at the pace or we couldn’t figure out what the potential issues would be like.
“It’s funny, we didn’t think we’d get that good in Bahrain, and we hope we’ll get stronger here and it turned out to be the opposite. It’s the nature of the sport and everyone is working hard to try more performances.”
Russell hopes Mercedes will compare the past two races to better understand why it’s so difficult in Jeddah, but he also believes he still lacks the performance needed to be in the frame for victory.
“As a team, we’re twice as many points as last year, perhaps more than twice as much,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve achieved better results in any of the races we did. It was a bad day and we’re back at P5. That’s a positive.
“But of course we’re not happy with it. We want to fight for victory, but now we don’t have the pace to do so. But when you have the pace, we’re just picking up those points. That’s positive.