In the qualifying session, Russell from the Mercedes team came ninth, and his teammate Lewis Hamilton was seventh. But Hamilton was slower than the fastest driver, Max Verstappen, by 0.589 seconds.
Russell made a mistake in the final part of the track, which cost him time. He believed he could have been 0.4 seconds faster and maybe even ended up in the top five if he hadn’t made a mistake.
Russell said, “We expected to be about 0.1 seconds behind Ferrari, McLaren, and Aston Martin. But in qualifying a small mistake can make a big difference. If you do everything perfectly, you can gain six positions.”
The Mercedes team has been struggling with the performance of their car, especially during qualifying sessions. They’ve noticed that the car doesn’t perform well in high-speed corners. This becomes more apparent during qualifying when the cars are lighter due to less fuel.
Russell explained, “Our car is good in low-speed and medium-speed corners, but it struggles in high-speed corners. When we take the fuel out for qualifying, the corners become faster, and our car can’t keep up.”
He continued, “During the race, the cars go through high-speed corners slower because they have more fuel. This makes the high-speed corners feel more like medium-speed corners, which suits our car better.”
Russell believes that it’s a good thing that they’re discovering these issues early in the season. He thinks that if the first few races had been at tracks with fewer high-speed corners, the results for Mercedes would have been different.
He said, “If we had started the season at tracks like Bahrain, Baku, and Singapore, where there are fewer high-speed corners, we would probably be doing better.”
