Mercedes trio were not too pleased after F1 Azerbaijan GP despite George Russell’s podium, as more is shed on Lewis Hamilton’s component issue.
It was not looking that great for Mercedes in F1 Azerbaijan GP until the final lap when the collision between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz aided Russell to end up third and on the podium. He was set to finish fifth but gained two places in the end.
Having lost a place to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen at the start, Russell did manage to fight back and regain the position, but didn’t have the legs to press further in the standings as Mercedes lacked pace against the two Ferrari cars along with Perez and Oscar Piastri.
It was mixed feeling on Russell’s side, but the downer was mostly on Hamilton’s side. Having elected to start from the pitlane, the Brit couldn’t make huge inroads after being stuck in a train of cars which included Aston Martin, Williams and Haas.
Despite attempts, Hamilton couldn’t get past until the final lap when he managed to clear both Nico Hulkenberg and Oliver Bearman to end up ninth, which was also made possible due to the collision ahead. Otherwise, he was mostly to end up outside points.
Post-race, Hamilton revealed about a part not working on his side which forced Mercedes to change the whole power unit and some suspension parts. The decision was debatable but the Brit anyhow had to take one extra unit at some point in the season.
Podium scene –
Russell: “We thought we could probably fight for P5. But how the race unfolded, we definitely didn’t expect. We were really slow in the first stint. I was about one and a half seconds slower than Charles most laps. And it all felt pretty disastrous. But then the last 20 laps of the race, we were a second lap quicker than Piastri and Charles and three or four tenths quicker than Max and Carlos and Checo. So, you know, I’m sort of a bit frazzled as to why that is. The only difference is going from a yellow tyre to a white tyre. And, yeah, we need to understand why, understand further.”
Wolff: “A difficult drive at the beginning, I think it’s tricky when you’re in a train and you’re fighting for position, but clearly our car is not good enough. The balance was not good enough to be really able to keep up, and we suffered from that. And the second stint was truly amazing. Difficult at the beginning, but once the car found its balance, because George drove it in the way it must be driven, then we were at times the quickest car. But these were the times that…we started racing at the beginning of the second stint, but looking back we could have raced all of them.”
PU change –
Hamilton: “It was a team decision. We had a great car on Friday and made the tiniest changes into Saturday. One of the components wasn’t correctly built. That led us the wrong way then on Saturday. We didn’t find out until the end of the day. Being this race was the best race they said at least to make the change for the engine because we need one engine as I lost one earlier. We knew it was going to be a tough day. We just basically corrected the issue [with the change].”
Wolff: “We decided to do the engine change in Azerbaijan. We knew that it’s going to be a race of misery, because it’s so difficult to overtake in Baku, and that’s what it was. The moment you come closer, you overheat the tyres, and then you go backwards, and I think this is what happened to him. But lots to learn. There were two different philosophies and we discussed it at length. You just swallow the pill here, because starting from P7 we didn’t know where that would have gone, or you do it in Austin. But we feel that Austin is an opportunity, so that was the decision. Right or wrong I don’t know. It was a close call.”
Issues all-through –
Russell: “We need to understand what happened in the race, because the last stint, we had a car that was comfortably capable of winning this race. And in the first stint, we had a car that probably didn’t deserve to be in the top 10. And the only difference is the tyres. We’re not the only team to talk about this. It’s pretty frustrating for all of us sometimes when you just don’t understand the fluctuations in performance between a Q1 and a Q2 session, as an example, or one stint to another. So, yeah, it’s a challenge.”
Hamilton: “It was the worst balance I’ve probably ever had. One of the worst balances. Basically I had so much front end but no rears I had to turn like this, it’s not the way you drive. I had to yank the steering to break the traction from the front, slide the front through every corner. It’s the weirdest way to drive. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to overtake. It is not one of those tracks, it’s difficult to follow in the middle, at least be close at the end. I don’t know why our pace was so bad on our side. It happened from Saturday.”
Wolff: “The track is an outlier, but nevertheless, it’s not like this was night and day. We still suffered from the same balance performance that we had on the new floor. So in Singapore, we have the same one that’s going to shift over and we need to race that. But from Austin onwards, we’ll probably go to a new specification.”
Here’s how F1 Azerbaijan GP panned out
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