George Russell struggled badly in the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, only managing fifth place after raising concerns over whether he would even be able to finish the race
Mercedes’ deputy technical director Simone Resta pinned the blame for George Russell’s struggles at the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix on the driver himself. Russell could only manage fifth place in Jeddah and struggled badly for pace throughout the race.
He had previously scored two third-place finishes and one second place in the opening four rounds of the season. But Mercedes ‘ performance suffered a nosedive on Sunday, with Russell’s team-mate Kimi Antonelli also facing problems.
Towards the end of the Saudi GP, which was won by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Russell raised concerns over whether he would finish the race. The 27-year-old questioned the safety of his tyres amid high degredation.
Russell had started on the medium tyre before switching to the hards 20 laps in. Mercedes’ pit wall convinced the Englishman they had no concerns over the state of his tyres and he did complete the race.
But he finished a massive 27 seconds behind leader Piastri, prompting concerns for the rest of the season. Resta, who recently arrived at the Silver Arrows from Ferrari, though believes that Russell’s tyre issues were a problem all of his own making.
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“We believe it was mainly related to pace so he was pushing too hard to stay with Charles and also defend with Norris and essentially, he lost the edge of the tyres and he paid the price at the end of the stint,” Resta told Mercedes’ YouTube channel.
“In reality in the race, we were a little bit less competitive than we thought and there is work to do ahead. We know that sometimes we’ve got margin to find in the conditions with the hot track where the tyres degrade too much thermally, so we need to focus on this one for going into Miami.
“We’ll have the same tyre compounds on a track that is expected to be quite hot so there will be potential similarities between Jeddah and Miami condition even if the speed is a bit less stronger in Miami.
“It has been a very good start for this car. The car has been competitive everywhere so far. So we expect to be competitive, fight for podium like we have done in the initial races and try to improve from what we’ve seen in Jeddah.”
Russell has admitted the being caught off-guard by the high degredation that he suffered during the second stint of the race. He said: “A real surprise, really struggling with tyre overheating. I was holding on to the front two at the beginning, just by a thread.
“Then the second stint I was pushing so hard to stay with them and suddenly my tyres got way too hot and I dropped off the cliff and I was losing a second lap in the last seven, eight laps.
“P5 is where we deserve to finish but the performance was pretty underwhelming today. This weekend was looking really strong, we did no laps in practice in the long run so I guess we couldn’t really capture the fact that maybe we weren’t on the pace.
“It is interesting, we didn’t expect to be so good in Bahrain and we expected to be stronger here and it turned out to be the opposite, that’s the nature of this sport and everyone is working hard to try and find more performance.”
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