Lewis Hamilton and George Russell speak up on the Mercedes mini-fight in F1 Mexico GP, as they went through some obstacles to end up in Top 5.
It was an up and down F1 Mexico GP weekend for Mercedes. Russell left too much work for the team after his FP2 crash, but both he and Hamilton did a good work in qualifying to make it in the Top 10 albeit behind in the pack having Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.
The race started off well for Hamilton who managed to clear Russell, but the latter came back to retake the place. It went like that for more than half the distance until Russell’s pace started to drop down after he had his front wing flap broken due to an incident with Oscar Piastri.
It happened when Russell was passing Piastri, who came out of the pits. The Brit hit a bump and the flap collapsed. Hamilton caught him up and after few laps of battling, he passed his teammate to secure a good result of fourth and fifth – although a long way off from the Top 3 drivers.
After the happenings between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, the Mercedes pair were sarcastic about their fight, being experienced enough to handle it well. Hamilton also revealed that he had to change his wing position in the pit stop after a pre-race gamble that didn’t work.
Start, wing position gamble –
Hamilton: “I had fun today. I had a good start, but I had a really bad first stint, took too much front wing out of the car, I had massive, massive understeer. I was like, damn, because you have to basically guesstimate where you’re going to be with the front wing, and I had a lot less than George. But the laps to the grid, it felt like it was the right thing, and it was clearly not. Maybe that would have been more understeer than I had planned but it [temperature] was going up at that time, so I took the front wing out in preparation for it to go to 45 degrees.
“It went the other way and so it brought understeer, so it was not almost like double the effect that I changed but probably third of it. After my stop, I was able to rectify it, and then after that I had a much better pace, and I was able to push and keep going and we stopped a little bit early as well, compared to what I had planned and stuff. We got good points.”
Russell: “I made a really strong start, you are kind of are at the mercy of where the driver in front of you go, unfortunately, he went to the right. Last year they went to the left and I was able to get the launch but yeah, I kind of got a bit snow-balled from the slipstream.”
Front wing damage –
Russell: “The pace was pretty strong in the first stint but when I came out of the pits behind Piastri, I pulled out down the straight and my front left flap just completely collapsed, so that probably cost me 3 or 4 tenths for the remainder of the race. That was tricky to hold on for 40 laps. P5 finish? I would have taken that after Friday.”
Wolff: “When overtaking out of the pits, he hit a bump and came very close, they came very close and that might have played a role. One of the front flap collapsed. So, it was tremendous loss of downforce, I think it was as high as 20 points. George drove around it but obviously the more the tyres are being hit, the impact on lap time is exponential. So, how can I explain the difference in pace? At the end of the hard run, you saw there was a bit of difference, so two reasons, first of all I think George drove very well all weekend.
“On the other side, there maybe something in the aero update package that causes something that we don’t understand. Because we had two massive crashes in the same corner in Austin. But then we had a crash in old car too, so this car is so under knife’s edge that it will be an interesting experiment in Brazil to see whether there is a high-speed instability or low-speed factor. So, I don’t think we can just extrapolate that one is better than the other which it isn’t.”
Fight between teammates –
Hamilton: “No, he didn’t but I had 10 laps, I knew it was going to happen at some point. I think he had a problem with his front wing. I don’t think either of us are silly. George is really smart, and so is fair, and he’s just really good at where he places his car, and I think for me too. So when they come on the radio and say, keep it clean, it’s like, of course.
“It is different when you fight somebody else but he is your teammate, so I had to be double careful because of points. But we got a lot of information. I could see on his car where he was better than me, and I’m sure hopefully he’ll be able to see where he’s better than me. Package-wise, hopefully they have lots of data, so we’ll figure out who starts at what next race.”
Russell: “No, it wasn’t easy to hold off. It was nice to have the battle and I mean it’s always good when you fight with Lewis because it’s hard and fair. At the moment there are number of manouevers that are just…it is getting beyond entertaining or beyond sport, it is just almost fair to point it.”
Wolff: “They are so good and so experienced that we allowed them racing at the beginning. I have no doubt…there was not a feeling where I thought it is getting a bit hairy. I think we made the call to George at the end, it was clear that Lewis was the faster car, maybe that one defence at the straight was a bit of a late move but I don’t have any doubts with them.”
Drip from Friday to Sunday –
Wolff: “I don’t think we are running lighter, I don’t think we are attacking more, I think it is a pattern all-season that we have seen where we are not being able to extract more performance when the track grips up. Some of the uglier behaviour come out like the three-wheeling, the bouncing, the instability when the car starts to pick up speed in the high-speed, is the pattern that we have seen. That is something we need to get on top of. We have a direction for next year, but obviously we see the glass half-empty, and that’s why we need to optimise those last races, what is it that we can learn.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-mexico-city-grand-prix-verstappen-snatches-the-lead-from-sainz-as-tsunoda-crashes-out-on-the-race-start.1814099639044755057
Here’s Lewis Hamilton taking on George Russell: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-mexico-city-grand-prix-hamilton-sweeps-past-russell-to-take-p4.1814105633979248010
Here’s how F1 Mexico GP panned out
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