Saturday’s sprint in Miami was another disappointing race for Mercedes, although Lewis Hamilton did everything he could to bounce back from yesterday’s difficult qualifying. But events on the track, where overtaking is quite difficult, were not in favor of the seven-time world champion: although he finished 8th on the track, he was given a 20-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane and ended up on the track. 16th line of the protocol.
“I don’t think you should expect much from the sprint race at all,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. – There were not many overtaking actions. We have seen that a driver in a car that is fast on the straights, like Daniel Ricciardo, was very much able to hold back an entire train, and ultimately ended up in the same position he started from.
If we talk about the fine that Lewis Hamilton received for speeding in the pit lane, then such mistakes sometimes happen. However, I think the car was able to run a good pace, but we definitely need to make some changes to the set-up before we start qualifying.
For the sprint we didn’t have the opportunity to work with the Medium tires at all, hence the low grip, which was literally zero. Therefore the car behaved very unstable and we could not count on good results.
However, there can be no excuses, although we have seen other teams also have problems…”
Source: F1 News
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