Hamilton: It became clear that we had a problem with the settings

Mercedes drivers admit their cars lack speed on the Baku circuit, but George Russell and Lewis Hamilton will try to battle for higher positions in tomorrow’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

George Russell (4th): “On the first lap I tried to stay ahead of Max and I wasn’t about to slow down. I’m here to fight for the win. I was surprised that even though I was on the outside stretch he kept defending because it’s always risky. I did everything I could to make sure everything was right, but there was contact between the machines. That’s what racing is.

The car worked fine today, but we just didn’t have enough speed. We understand that there is still work to be done for tomorrow’s race. I will start from a further away position, but we have a good race pace, so I will try to get ahead.

I hope I can get a good start and stay out of trouble, after which we will have a long race where there may be safety cars and red flags. Anything can happen, so we’ll see how it goes.”

Lewis Hamilton (7th): “I love that we tried something new with this weekend format. Extra qualification was nice. The sprint was less interesting, but probably because I got into trouble.

Losing position to Alonso is not an ideal situation. Rolling backwards is always unpleasant, but sometimes it happens while racing. I couldn’t keep up with the cars in front of me, but now, after the sprint, I know why. It became clear that we have a problem with the settings, so we will look into it and hopefully we can make improvements tomorrow.

It will be a tough race, but anything can happen in this Grand Prix.”

Toto Wolff, team leader and CEO: “4th place is quite a worthy result considering how fast our car can go this weekend. George spent the last third of the race feeling confident. He benefited from having the track clear in front of him, although following Lewis’s example we saw that when you get stuck in traffic the tires start to wear out faster. Hamilton couldn’t get higher than 7th and now we have to analyze that to do better in tomorrow’s race.

Contact between George and Max Verstappen’s cars on the first lap was a racing incident. One of the riders tried to go through the corner on the outside track, and that is always difficult. Max’s car was damaged, which affected his race, and he was understandably upset, but George defended his position.

We wanted to see how the new sprint format worked this weekend. I’m glad we did it. and now we can analyze how it went and see if anything needs to be changed to make the show even brighter.