George Russell claims the tricky track surface Formula 1 has encountered in Miami will make it hard for the drivers to battle each other in Sunday’s race.
Mercedes enjoyed a positive opening session, with Russell taking advantage of track evolution to clock the quickest time – two-tenths ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton – despite sitting out a period as his steering rack was replaced.
However, the German outfit dropped back down the order to P7 and P15 in FP2 as Red Bull and Ferrari took over at the front.
Russell has cited how he felt his struggles to nail a clean lap on the soft tyre was a similar circumstance to what led to his exit from the second stage of qualifying last year.
“It was a similar thing last year, quickest on Friday then was knocked out in Q2 on Saturday,” the Brit explained.
“The car just changed a bit from the medium run in FP2, I felt strong, was on a lap a good couple of tenths up that would have put me P4, put the softs on and the car just wasn’t working for me.”
Hamilton was also left perplexed by Mercedes tumbling down the order, stating it was like “a kick in the gut” as he ended FP2 down in seventh place, 0.9s off Max Verstappen’s benchmark time.
But Russell is confident that Mercedes have an idea of the issue and the 25-year-old is optimistic that improvements can be made overnight to recover the lost pace.
“I think we understand a bit why that is and fortunately we’ve got the time to make improvements overnight but yeah, it’s fine margins,” he disclosed.
Asked if the time of day might have impacted Mercedes’ pace in the second session, Russell replied: “Yeah potentially.”
On F1’s second-ever visit to the Miami International Autodrome, many drivers were caught out throughout the two practice sessions by a lack of grip on the newly relayed track surface.
Both Hamilton and Russell complained about the conditions, while Charles Leclerc found the barrier at Turn 8 in FP2 after losing the rear of his Ferrari late in the session.
Russell has underlined the difficulty in keeping the car under control once it strays from the racing line and reckons that will provide a big deterrent to drivers going side-by-side through the corners in Sunday’s race.
“FP1 was a bit of a messy session and perhaps more people put emphasis on the quali runs now, but I think we’ll go into Sunday a bit of an unknown, the track’s been resurfaced, it’s still not performing like any other circuit, it’s a true outlier here, which is cool in some regards.
“I think it’ll be really difficult to race because you don’t drive off line and you’ve seen a few people myself included, you put one wheel off and there’s no grip whatsoever, so I don’t really know what’s going on in this Miami heat, as that’s the theme, but let’s see tomorrow.”
Despite a challenging and downbeat end to the first day of the race weekend, Russell is confident that Mercedes can still emerge ahead of Aston Martin and Ferrari.
“I think if we get things tight there’s no reason we can’t be ahead of Ferrari and Aston Martin and I think that’s the aim, first four races now it’s really tight between those teams, if it was for the win and pole it’d be exciting, but it’s good if we get things right it shows we can get ahead of them.
“We have the potential, we saw it in FP2 and at the start of FP2 but we just need to get things right,” he added.
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