In the race, Mercedes is usually strong this season, but there is often no sign of the pace in qualifying and certainly not in practice. Mercedes does not understand 100 percent where these large fluctuations in pace come from, says George Russell, who had secured pole position in Hungary but only finished eighth on the grid in Belgium.
“That’s definitely an issue for us this season,” says the Englishman. “To be honest, we still don’t fully understand why we have such a big turnaround.”
He doesn’t understand why Mercedes often ends up behind Alpine and McLaren in qualifying and was even almost beaten by Alexander Albon in Williams in Belgium.
“But in the race we then showed a very strong pace,” he says. Russell was similar to Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz in fourth, just missing out on the podium, while team-mate Lewis Hamilton was out early after a first-lap collision with Fernando Alonso in the battle for second.
Podium in Belgium was possible
“It was quite disappointing not to get third place,” he says. “If I had done a few things a little differently, it would have been possible.” Russell says he would have been on the gas in the last stint but then had nothing left in the tires to attack Sainz.
“We had enough pace to maybe save the tires a bit more and then maybe get it a lap or two later,” said the Brit. “Nevertheless, I think we have to be happy with how Sunday went.”
“But we just have to understand where that performance went on Friday and Saturday.”
There is a lack of downforce
Hamilton was 1.8 seconds behind the later race winner Max Verstappen in qualifying at Spa, George Russell was another three tenths of a second slower. According to him, one reason for this is simply the lack of downforce.
“On Sunday when things are a bit more balanced we see that we’re still three or four tenths behind Red Bull on average and we need to find a little more global downforce and maybe make our car a little more efficient to get on the straights don’t waste so much time,” he says.
“But as we said before, this season we are at a disadvantage if we qualify in the lower half of Q3 or sometimes not even in Q3 and that puts us in a very difficult position,” said the Mercedes driver.
And the tires are also an issue: “We just have to find a way to get the best out of them on a lap.”