Mercedes had a tricky qualifying session to decide the grid for Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton qualified P5, with George Russell down in 11th.
The seven-time World Champion only just made the final segment of qualifying as he beat his fellow Brit and teammate by a mere 0.004s.
Speaking post-qualifying, Hamilton explained he did not maximise everything in Q2.
“We’re trying as hard as we can, giving it absolutely everything out there,” Hamilton said. “Timing, getting into the rhythm and really pulling out everything is not easy around this track.
“In Q2, I struggled. I had more pace but I didn’t get that last lap.
However, in Q3 the 103-time Grand Prix winner delivered a superb first run to be best of the rest behind the Ferraris and Red Bulls. He found half a second from his best Q2 attempt to pip Fernando Alonso to P5 on the grid. Hamilton missed out on beating Sainz by 0.166s.
“My first Q3 run was a really sweet lap. I just matched it basically at the end [on the second attempt]. I needed just a little bit more time just to nip a Ferrari. But this is definitely a good position to start for on Sunday.
Hamilton says an upgrade is in the pipeline as they attempt to close the gap to Red Bull Racing in particular.
“Naturally, this is not the position we want as a team, we exist to win. But everyone has that winning mindset and everyone’s working as hard as they can.
“We haven’t had an upgrade this weekend but we’re working towards one that will hopefully put us a little bit closer to the battle ahead.”
In Australia, Mercedes qualified P2 and P3 on the grid, with Hamilton finishing a solid 2nd on the Sunday. In Baku, however, they are losing time in every single section according to the Brit.
“I didn’t really know what to expect this weekend, I knew that the Red Bulls would be particularly quick, I didn’t realise we’d have such a huge deficit on the straights, but it’s a good indicator.
“We’re slower on the straights and then slower in the middle sector. We’ve got a lot of work to do to rectify that in the car, it’s not the easiest one to drive.
“Yeah I’m happy to be on the third row and I think hopefully tomorrow we can have a bit of a better battle.”
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
On the other side of the garage, George Russell had a tough day. Although he was only 0.004s slower than teammate Hamilton in Q2, he seemed to be a step behind his countryman throughout the day. A big slide out of turn 16 on his final Q2 lap ruined any hope of progressing to the final segment of qualifying.
It’s quite the fall from Melbourne where he qualified on the front row with Max Verstappen.
“Well, I mean, we’re not fast enough this weekend,” stated Russell. “Obviously, I would have loved to have been in Q3. I was giving everything. The lap was strong, but I made a mistake on my last one. May have just crept me in to Q3, but I don’t think we’d have been able to qualify much higher than P8.
“It’s a funny, funny sport this one sometimes, you know, going from qualifying on the front row in Australia to, you know, both of us, well, myself being out in Q2 and Lewis just getting in with P10.
“So, yeah, we’ve got another chance to look tomorrow, but not an ideal Friday, for sure.”
Russell was only P17 in practice and complained about not having the required feeling from the brakes in FP1 to fully attack the circuit with confidence. As the winner of last year’s sprint and race at Interlagos noted, it’s a far cry from that performance last November.
“I mean, I wasn’t feeling great in practice, to be honest,” he said. “I would have loved to have done a few more laps. We were sat in the garage for quite a long time, doing a few bits and bobs, which, you know, it’s so easy in hindsight to say you should have, could have, would have had a bit of learning for this sprint race.
“I mean, last sprint race we had, we hit the ground running and we were flying every session. This one, it’s been the opposite. I think that’s the way it goes sometimes with these events.”
The 25-year-old is hopeful of making a recovery from the sixth row on Sunday, and he will give it everything on sprint Saturday tomorrow to take a step forward in the shootout and race.
“I think right now, we wouldn’t really know what to change to find the pace we need around this track,” Russell continued. “It’s definitely a unique one. It’s definitely an outlier compared to the first three races we’ve been to.
“Of all the tracks that have a bad qualifying, this is probably the one, or one of the ones you’d choose to do it. So I see no reason why we can’t fight back on Sunday.
“We’ll see what we can do tomorrow. But yeah, work hard, try and improve my driving, work with the team to see what we can do and come back strong.”
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
