F1 News
Russell identifies problem: ‘Temperature is hotter, a step backwards"
George Russell finished in P12 in the second free practice session of the day, which meant that neither his teammate Lewis Hamilton nor Russell himself could break into the top 10 throughout the two sessions on Friday. It was a challenging day for the Briton, who commented the issues he had to face today.
"No, we definitely made quite a few changes from P1 to P2, but maybe didn't compensate enough for the conditions. All learning, but just a difficult afternoon for sure," Russell told GPblog among others after the end of FP2.
Russell added: "I think it summed up well, to be honest. Definitely not our finest Friday. I think conditions will be different tomorrow. Need to try and get to the bottom of it because the pace in FP1 was looking reasonably good on the medium tyre, we thought was right up there. If we took the soft, but in FP2 we were nowhere. We just need to try and understand that."
Is the problem found?
Russell also expanded on what might have cause Mercedes’ problems in Silverstone so far. "We've seen a small trend that when the temperature is hotter we seem to take a bit of a step backwards. We've got some ideas why that is. I'm still a bit sweaty, ten minutes since I've jumped out of a car, five minutes since I've jumped out of a can, I just need to dig into the data with the team and see what we can do for tomorrow."
He also underlined the challenge the wind creates for the drivers. "I think, it's so windy out there at the moment for all the drivers. I think everybody's speaking about it. Really challenging conditions. Not a lot to take away from the upgrades as such but come qualifying I'm sure we'll know where we stand."
"I've still got half a smile on my face over here giving me something to be positive about and still got the energy to have a good night's sleep and come back stronger tomorrow," the one-time race winner concluded.