Lewis Hamilton: We lacked pace in the race

The Mercedes team and its drivers are unhappy with the results of the Italian Grand Prix, in which they finished 5th and 7th, but hope to make up for this at the next stage of the season in Baku.

Lewis Hamilton (5th): “Today we didn’t have enough speed to fight for better results. McLaren and especially Ferrari were faster than us. I managed to stay behind Sainz, but I couldn’t drive the longer first stint of the race and implement the one-stop strategy – unlike him.

If we had started ahead of Carlos, we might have been able to hold him off. The thing is, our car wasn’t the best balanced today, and that meant we couldn’t claim more. It’s a shame, because it looked like we had a good chance this weekend.

“We looked good in practice and qualifying, but today we couldn’t keep up with the pace of the leaders. However, the results are very close, so it will be very interesting to see what happens in the next races. We keep working hard and hope that in two weeks we can race in Baku with more confidence.”

George Russel (7th): “The day brought nothing but problems. The most important thing was that we didn’t have enough speed to fight for the podium, but I had to give up my hopes already in the first corner. When this happens after all the efforts of the team, it can be frustrating.

I had a good start but found myself in a zone of disturbed air behind Oscar Piastri’s car. To avoid a collision I had to brake hard but it all ended with locking the wheels and damaging the front wing. This affected the first stint of my race and we lost time in the pit stop because we had to change the nose cone.

“Both in Monza and a week ago in Zandvoort our pace was worse than before the summer break. Together with the whole team we will try to find out why this is happening. It seems that other teams have made a step forward, so all necessary measures will have to be taken to catch up with them.”

Toto WolffTeam boss: “Congratulations to Ferrari and Charles Leclerc, they took a well-deserved victory today. When the red car crosses the finish line first in Monza, it is always a special moment.

Our race pace was better than a week ago in Zandvoort, but still not good enough. We opted for the two-pit-stop tactic because we had a problem with the granulation of the left front tire and it was unlikely that we could cover the whole distance with one pit stop.

We had a difficult problem to solve, because we had to choose: either try to limit ourselves to one pit stop, or attack more aggressively, but change the tyres twice. But the pace we were able to do today would not have allowed us to earn more than we earned in either scenario.

In the last two races we did worse than before the summer break. When you don’t have enough speed it becomes difficult to choose tactics – that’s exactly what happened today. Before the stage in Baku we will have time to analyze the reasons for what happened, and there we will try to earn it back.”