George Russell says getting Mercedes’ W13 into the right window “is so difficult” after the team’s struggles during qualifying in Saudi Arabia.
Russell qualified sixth, behind the Red Bull/Ferrari drivers and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, but was still the lead car after Lewis Hamilton’s difficult session.
Hamilton was eliminated in Q1, having lacked rear grip, marking his worst qualifying performance on pure pace alone since 2009.
“We’re not here to be battling for P5, P6,” said Russell. “As a team, it was a very difficult day – the car is really on a knife edge and getting it in the right window is so difficult.
“Lewis and I went down a different set-up routes. And clearly it didn’t work out for him. And it’s pretty clear in the data.
“From my personal side, I think I would have definitely been pleased with P5, just half a tenth away. It was possible if I really put absolutely everything together. But that’s just where we are at the moment.
“It’s tricky, because we put in all of our effort into solving this porpoising issue. And it’s not allowing us to focus on other things.
“As a driver, it’s not allowing me to focus on the driving as much, tyre grip, the fine tuning of the balance, and the set-up that we can’t really do because all of our is on solving this issue. So we’ve got work to do.”
Russell outlined that Mercedes is still limited by the same problems that it was suffering from during testing.
“Exactly the same as we’ve seen since day one, really, we have the porpoising issue,” he said.
“The only way to run is to raise the car very high. And, obviously, with this ground effects car, we lose all of the downforce.
“So, we know that if we can get the car on the ground there’s a huge chunk of lap time there. But we can’t achieve that at the moment.
“So, it’s all well and good saying that, but we can’t physically achieve that right now. So we need to have a rethink.”
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