George Russell of Mercedes grabbed P4 in the second qualifying session of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Briton's P4 in Baku during the sprint shootout exceeded his expectations, but Russell still has mixed feelings about it.
Russell leaves with mixed feelings about P4
The driver explains this to GPBlog and others: "Mixed feelings. Firstly, very happy with the job in qualifying. I think P4 is exceeding our expectations. But when I got back into the pit lane, I was like, bugger. Still made that mistake yesterday, and it showed what was probably possible. "
Russell notes that his team always gets better and better during qualifying and that there is always the possibility of making the most of it during Q3. On the positive side: "We don't purposefully make the car in that way that it keeps seemingly getting better. We've got some ideas why that may be."
In the middle of the sprint format, Russell was also already asked to reflect on it, with the British driver seeming to like it: "Obviously last night I was a bit annoyed with everything. But I think having action every single day is quite exciting. I hope it doesn't dilute the excitement for a Sunday for the fans. For us, it's obviously fun because you're driving flat out more often."
The Mercedes is not a good car at present relative to other teams, but Russell is getting it higher up the grid than where it realistically should be because of his exceptional qualifying skills, to earn him the nickname of "Mr Saturday", just like how he was able to get the Williams consistently into Q2 and even Q3 in previous years, when the car should really only have been around P16-P18.
Russell did well to get merc up there he use to a poor car and get the best out of it .
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