George Russell has lamented a “very bad qualifying” for Mercedes in Sepang as Red Bull pulled off a shock pole position at the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
All eyes were on Mercedes in Sepang, after the Silver Arrows claimed that its newly introduced upgrade could be worth as much as three tenths of a second per lap.
Instead, it became clear during qualifying that Mercedes had not made the jump in performance expected, consistently lapping over half a second down on surprise pole-sitters Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
Russell seemed to struggle more in comparison to teammate Kimi Antonelli, ending up over seven tenths of a second adrift of Verstappen, down in seventh place.
Asked after qualifying Russell was lost as to the reason behind Mercedes’ sudden slump in performance.
“No, to be honest,” he said to media, including Motorsport Week.
“Obviously this circuit is a bit of an outlier in terms of the abrasiveness of the tarmac, you know, the lap times.
“Seven years ago we were about six or seven seconds faster and at certain points on the track it feels like you’re driving on gravel.
“Which is the same for everyone, however it’s clearly affecting us more than others.”
George Russell confirms “challenge” facing Mercedes in Sepang
Russell confirmed that Mercedes is facing a challenge to understand the car’s behaviour in Malaysia, lamenting its performance and questioned whether the upgrade was an improvement.
“Well that is the big question mark,” he said.
“If you could have done a direct back-to-back it would have been great to know, but that’s the challenge of this sport.
“If I put the upgrade package on last week, even if it was worse, we probably still would have been on pole. And we’d have been saying it was fantastic.
“And equally if we had the old car here, maybe the result would have been even worse. So that’s the challenge. As a team we have yet to have, let’s say, a bad race this whole season and this was clearly a very bad qualifying for us.
“All the numbers say it’s an improvement, but obviously it’s a sport where we need to follow the lap times and not what the numbers say. So the numbers look absolutely fine and in line with expectations, however the result wasn’t.
“Well, I think there’s going to be a lot happening tomorrow. The tyre deg is huge, I think race pace will be king. So even though today was a real disappointment, it’s not the be-all end-all.”
Discussion about this post