Mercedes racers judged the results of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix differently, and if Lewis Hamilton emphasized that 6th place was the maximum one could count on, then his partner blames himself for the mistake he made – according to George Russell, if not then could he be ahead of Fernando Alonso. And Toto Wolff categorically stated that the race was far from the most interesting.
Lewis Hamilton (6th): “I think we managed to squeeze the maximum out of the car this weekend. Before leaving for Baku, we prepared carefully, for example, I spent a few days at the team base and worked on the simulator.
I’m really proud of our team, everyone who works at Brackley – our team has a very right mindset, everyone strives to make progress, but it happens gradually, in stages. Everyone in the Mercedes garage is also in a great mood, everyone is doing their utmost and that is the most important thing now. I hope that if we receive technical innovations, we can attack more aggressively.
How it will turn out in Miami, I don’t know yet, but we understood that we had to spend several races before the car was upgraded. I’m already counting down the days and weeks to this moment, although it’s hard to say how effective the new products will be.
Still, I hope that the stage in Miami will be more successful than in Baku. A year ago we were hampered by a strong car build-up, but now this problem has been solved, so I hope we can narrow the gap to those ahead of us there. Red Bull is too fast for us, but maybe we can overtake Aston Martin.”
George Russell (8th): “It’s a bit frustrating that I didn’t give my best. After the start everything went well, I gained a few positions back, the pit stop was also successful – I managed to get ahead of Lance Stroll. But even though I confident in myself and in the car, I made a mistake after the restart by going off the track in the first corner.
Fernando Alonso braked quite early and that surprised me. I had to do something to avoid a collision and in the next 19 seconds I lost position to Lance and Lewis with mud sticking to my tyres.
If it wasn’t for this I could probably finish ahead of Fernando or at least take fifth place. But the eighth result is too far from where we want to be. I got an extra bonus point for the best lap, but this opportunity only arose because we were far from the best position.
In terms of pace we were quite comparable to Ferrari and Aston Martin, and even a minimal difference in speed can significantly affect the results. Who cares though, even fourth, even eighth, but we’re still a long way from first, so there’s still a lot to do.
Toto Wolff, team leader: “You cannot call today’s race a thriller. There were very few overtakes, despite the big difference in pace.
Even during training, we did not choose the most optimal direction when working with the settings and realized it too late – the cars were already in the closed park. But with this format of the weekend, everyone was in an equal position.
During the race, when our cars were on a clear track, the pace was on par with Ferrari and Aston Martin, and it’s hard to say who is faster in the end because there were problems with overtaking. Although the Red Bull racers quickly broke away from everyone, because the cars allowed it.
However, if we manage to make progress in adjusting the basic parameters of our W14, then I think we can close the gap this year. And it’s not even about downforce, we just need to give our drivers a car they can drive with confidence.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
