Mercedes: Hamilton and Russell enter a big problem
When will things finally start to look up at Mercedes-Benz? The second part of an Evo package for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell is coming for the upcoming Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
6th place for Lewis Hamilton in Miami, George Russell eighth – Mercedes is standing still, despite a new underbody that the former series world champions brought to Florida.
Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin says in his review of the World Cup race in Miami: “We have intensified development so much that we were able to put some of the improvements on the car in America, I’m talking about the new underbody. The second part of these innovations will then follow in Imola.”
“According to our figures, the floor is doing exactly what we expected it to do. The problem is that the other teams are also developing rapidly. McLaren, for example, had a lot of new parts on the car in Florida.
“The second problem in terms of competitiveness is that Lewis and George’s difficulties with the handling of the car obscure the true potential of our improvements.”
We continue to have the big problem that the car behaves differently from training to training. As long as we don’t get this out of the way, it will be difficult to fully utilize all the Evo parts.”
“We believe that in the last few weeks we have better understood what we need to do with the car to make things a little easier for our drivers. We have a lot of new things for the racing car for the next three or four races and we hope that we will be able to reap the fruits of this work soon.”
Miami GP, Miami International Autodrome
01. Lando Norris (GB), McLaren, 1:30:49.876 h
02. Max Verstappen (NL), Red Bull Racing, +7.612 sec
03. Charles Leclerc (MC), Ferrari, +9.920
04. Sergio Pérez (MEX) , Red Bull Racing, +14.650
05. Carlos Sainz (E), Ferrari, +16.407*
06. Lewis Hamilton (GB), Mercedes, +16.585
07. Yuki Tsunoda (J), Racing Bulls, +26.185
08. George Russell ( GB), Mercedes, +34.789
09. Fernando Alonso (E), Aston Martin, +37.107
10. Esteban Ocon (F), Alpine, +39.746
11. Nico Hülkenberg (D), Haas, +40.789
12. Pierre Gasly (F ), Alpine, +44.958
13. Oscar Piastri (AUS), McLaren, +49.756
14. Guanyu Zhou (RCH), Sauber, +49.979
15. Daniel Ricciardo (AUS), Racing Bulls, +50.956
16. Valtteri Bottas (FIN) , Sauber, +52.356
17. Lance Stroll (CDN), Aston Martin, +55.173
18. Kevin Magnussen (DK), Haas, +1:04.683 min
19. Alex Albon (T), Williams, +1:16.091
Out
Logan Sargeant (USA), Williams, crash
*5-second time penalty for collision with Piastri
