George Russell admitted Mercedes had “probably overcompensated” with the changes they made to this year’s W15 as a way to improve on the previous two seasons.
The team has only one win in the ground effects era, with Russell at the 2022 São Paulo Grand Prix, but a fourth-row lockout in Miami led Lewis Hamilton to believe it was their car’s “real speed”. I wondered.
Mercedes “probably overcompensated” with W15 concept changes
Mercedes has struggled to match Red Bull since the 2022 mass regulation changes, but the team has made significant changes to its car this year in hopes of delivering better results.
Russell and Hamilton were high on the prospects of their cars in pre-season testing, but results have not yet developed in their favor, with Ferrari and McLaren looking to make clearer progress towards 2024. is showing.
Russell acknowledges the reality that seventh and eighth places on the grid reflect Mercedes’ current competitiveness, and although he knows what needs to be done to improve, it’s easy enough to solve quickly. No, he said.
Russell told Sky F1 after qualifying in Miami: “Tomorrow I’m going to look forward. I hope there’s no pressure from behind, but seventh and eighth place is a decent position at the moment.” .
“I think the result we showed today was the maximum, but we are confident about tomorrow. We will take a step towards them.
“The fact is that stopwatches don’t lie, and perhaps some of the changes we’ve made since the end of last year may have been overcompensated with some of the development items we’ve made. We know that.
“Today’s cars have limits, but they are completely different from the limits we had 12 months ago.
“We’ve put in a lot of effort to fix the problem, but we’ve gone too far in that direction. So we know we need to improve, and we need to improve quickly. There is.”
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When asked if he knew how to solve the new problems facing Mercedes, he replied:
“If you look at the data, I think you can understand why we are in the situation we are in.
“And as I said last year, when you look at the data, you can see why we were in the same position we were in. And, unfortunately, we probably overcompensated to solve last year’s problems. And we got out of this situation.” Now to the extreme.
“You have to rewind and realize you’re in a kind of middle ground, but when it takes eight weeks for a new upgrade to be introduced into the car, you see this problem in race one, race two. I can’t afford to.” Upgrade to the next race.
“The wind tunnel has to be installed, designed, someone has to draw it, someone has to build it, and half the season is over.
“I think that’s why it’s so hard to suddenly make progress when you’re behind, and why everyone expects it tomorrow.
“We hope for it tomorrow, believe me, but this is the reality of F1.”
As for Hamilton, in Q3 he qualified four-hundredths slower than Russell on medium tires, and Mercedes opted to use yellow-marked tires for the final run, which are theoretically slower than red-marked soft tires. did.
Hamilton admitted it was “tough” to be clearly so far off the pace and wondered if it reflected their true pace, but decided to look at the positives too. .
“Overall it was a much better day, or at least it was positive to move forward in the sprint race and then qualify into Q3.”
“Q3 wasn’t very good, but I’m grateful to have made it to Q3, but it’s tough to get an eight-tenth difference.
“Obviously we were fighting against Haas, but I’m not sure if it’s the real speed of our car or if it’s because of the tires. I think this tire has a lot to offer. But I haven’t mastered everything yet.”
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