Mercedes trio of George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff were left surprised with 1-2 result in F1 Las Vegas GP, but they take it with open arms.
It has certainly been unpredictable for Mercedes in F1 2024. And Las Vegas GP proved it once again after a 1-2 finish where Russell dominated from the get go and Hamilton fought through from 10th to finish second on the road, denying the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull a chance to fight.
Russell had a clean show from start to finish, while Hamilton had to work for his result. Both the drivers and Wolff indicate the colder temperature as one of the biggest factors for the performance delivery, where the Austrian reckons they found the sweet spot with the tyres.
So much that, they could push anytime they wanted to and ease off at will. The result is important for Mercedes to understand their car more and work on 2025. It was also a good result for Hamilton, especially after what happened in Brazil and his radio comments then after.
Race, weekend –
Russell: “Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a real surprise seeing how strong our pace has been and securing the pole yesterday I was so pleased with. And then I think we won the race in stint one. To be honest, stint one was exceptional. And I knew from there on in the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tyres and opened them up. So it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.”
Hamilton: “I had a great time. When you’re progressing and moving forward, it’s always a great feeling. It felt very much like my old days at Rye House, starting at the back and coming through, so it was great. It doesn’t really matter, really, does it [what would have been if not for qualifying issue]? At the end of the day, George did a great job, did everything he was supposed to do and I’m happy for him and I’m just grateful I could get back up there to support the team with a 1-2.”
Why the pace –
Russell: “Yeah, I think so. It’s no secret that we struggle on the bumpy circuits and we have to lift the car quite a lot. We’ve got to make it much softer. And then we’re in a downforce window where we don’t have any. And it’s not that we just suddenly forget how to set the car up. It’s just certain circuits require us to put the car in a window it doesn’t like to be. And on tracks like this where it’s relatively smooth, we can get the car quite low, quite stiff, with little or no bumps around the track, we fly.”
Hamilton: “Honestly, I don’t really remember it. Best of recent [times], of course. We got a really good balance in the car today. It felt a lot better than it was yesterday, particularly Q3 yesterday, but yeah, just phenomenal for the team.”
Wolff: “It is cold. I think that clearly you can correlate where we’ve been, where we’ve been strong. We’ve been strong in Silverstone, we’ve been strong in Spa and then here in Las Vegas. I think it’s just keeping the car in a sweet spot, the tyres in the optimum window. We were very, very quick. I mean, we were two seconds quicker than our competition at times that George was pushing. And for the rest of the day, he was just managing his pace. I think it kind of spirals into the bad zone when you break traction and then it’s hot.
“You kind of swing out of the window all the time, and when you break traction here, that was actually helpful to keep the temperature at the time. So clearly, there is an aspect that some teams really love the cold, and they expect a lot of performance. There’s some teams that are feeling so strong when it was hot in Singapore in the clouds and then they have dominated in the way they just controlled it in the way they wanted. So, yeah, it would be important to find a balance for next year.”
Bounce back after Brazil –
Hamilton: “Yeah, great, great performance. It’s not that I didn’t think I could do it. So, yeah, I’ve had many races like this, but I’m generally happy to have had the recovery. You know, it’s a new day and I just tried to approach it with a positive mindset. and you know to be able to have a car underneath me today, and be able to push and overtake people was such a great feeling. That was honestly one of the most enjoyable races.
“Yeah, if I’d started pole and just led the way, wouldn’t have felt as much fun, for sure. Of course, winning a Grand Prix is always a great thing, but when whoever it is faces adversity and has to battle through, it just feels so much better when you do succeed.”
Wolff: “You can see that the car was great, the strategy worked out for him and his driving was very good, coming from 10th and then coming so close to George at the end, shows how great he is as a driver.”
Result –
Wolff: “This one is a really important result. You have locations over the weekend and then normally you can see where everything was here, that we’ve been not so good on in that session. But here, every single session, we were ahead. So, lots of field paper that allow us to say, well, at least we know where the sweet spot is, this is where we need to be, and then trying to find out how we can hit that target more often. It was strange, because we were capable of pushing whenever we wanted to.
“There was no graining appearing, neither on the medium, nor on the hard. You could see Charles attempted a few times to put pressure on George, which he defended great. I don’t know what the outcome would have been of that, but the driving was essential and he [Leclerc] fell off. Leclerc after a few laps, couldn’t hold the pace and fell off. We didn’t have a single sign of graining, nor degradation.”
Here’s Mercedes after 1-2: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-las-vegas-grand-prix-russell-crosses-the-line-to-lead-home-a-1-2-finish-for-mercedes.1816590567152111228
Here’s Lewis Hamilton coming through to P2: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-las-vegas-grand-prix-every-hamilton-overtake-as-he-storms-from-10th-to-p2.1816596307933866968
Here’s how F1 Las Vegas GP panned out
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