Russell: It’s important to make the car’s behavior stable

At a press conference in Las Vegas, George Russell commented on the results of the previous stage of the season, in which Mercedes had a chance to win but the team missed it.

George Russell: “The Sao Paulo Tour was a race of missed opportunities for us, and when we started to analyze it it became clear how quickly events developed and the situation changed. When we made our pit stop it seemed like the timing was perfect, only to find out later that it was the wrong decision.

But if the virtual safety car mode had lasted 10 or 15 seconds longer, the pit stop would have been very welcome. All this just confirms how quickly decisions made during the race can affect the course of events, and you have to adapt to that very quickly.

And we were probably too focused on the pit stop and therefore didn’t see that the car had stopped on the track and the VSC mode ended.

Certainly, the race in Sao Paulo can be called atypical, but when the Grand Prix is ​​held in the rain, all kinds of opportunities arise. Both we and Alpine had the opportunity to succeed, and they could very well take advantage of it.

But when we analyzed in more detail how the qualifying for the sprint and the short race itself in Sao Paulo went, we got a more correct picture of the balance of power: we have to admit that we were still inferior to the best teams.

Now that almost the entire season is behind us, we can say that we have fully identified the reasons why our car is so unstable. It has a very narrow range of optimal settings, and if we manage to get within this range, the W15 will allow us to fight for race victories.

But then we get to another number, change the settings, and then we’re completely out of this range. Of course it’s frustrating because we know the car has potential. However, every team can say the same, because almost everyone has a set of results.

But when the car allowed it, we won the pole positions and now the task is to make the car more stable.”