After the weekend in Suzuka had started so well for Mercedes on Friday with the first two places in the second free practice session, the important sessions in qualifying and the race were followed by disillusionment.
While Lewis Hamilton and George Russell complained about the lack of top speed after qualifying and Alpine had to admit defeat, things didn’t look any better on race Sunday. Although the Mercedes W13 seemed to have a good pace in the rain with the selected set-up with a lot of downforce, the two Mercedes drivers couldn’t really show this in traffic.
Hamilton ended up fifth behind Esteban Ocon after being stuck behind the Frenchman for the entire race and unable to overtake due to lack of top speed, which also bothered the Brit after the race.
Hamilton on Ocon duel: “I gave everything”
“I tried everything, but unfortunately we were just incredibly slow this weekend,” said Hamilton. “I was the slowest of them all on the straights, I think. Once you got out of the slipstream, you just couldn’t go any further.”
“But it was a lot of fun. [Ocon] did a great job staying on track and staying ahead. And obviously he was very, very fast on the straights,” adds Hamilton.
His team-mate George Russell finished eighth at the Japanese Grand Prix after Mercedes made a double pit stop while changing from extreme rain tires to intermediates, which cost Russell a lot of time.
Russell annoyed by Mercedes stop: lost ten seconds!
“I have to look at it again,” he says. “I knew everyone was going to pit and we were going to lose a lot of time with the double stop because everyone was lined up. I think I could have done one more lap and I probably have ten seconds in the pit lane lost.”
Unlike his teammate, however, Russell was able to draw attention to himself with some spectacular overtaking maneuvers during the race. With the Mercedes being too slow on the straights and DRS not activating due to the wet conditions, Russell kept trying the twisty first sector.
Russell: Overtaking maneuvers were ‘the only bright spot’
When asked about the maneuvers in the Esses, he says: “That was the only bright spot. It was fun, but it was really a tire management race. That was probably the most tire management I’ve ever done in a Formula 1 race And considering it was wet, that’s pretty surprising.”
“That was the culmination of two bad races for us, for different reasons. We now have to analyze the race and see what happened,” says Russell, who is also thinking about how Formula 1 could make overtaking even easier.
“I think it’s difficult for everyone. I don’t know how the race went overall but with these Formula 1 cars without DRS you can’t overtake. Maybe in the future you have to think a little bit about how to get that advantage when you’re within a second.”