The 2024 F1 Dutch Grand Prix was a confusing weekend for George Russell and his team at Mercedes. Russell was slated for a solid race, looking comfortable in Free Practices and qualifying 4th. He gained a position on McLaren’s Oscar Piastri at the first turn, already in podium position and fighting at the top.
As the race went on, Russell slowly but surely fell out of that fight. He was undercut by Leclerc, passed by Piastri, and Mercedes decided to box a second time because of high tyre degradation.
He finished far from the podium in 7th, his teammate Lewis Hamilton in 8th. Both cars from McLaren, Red Bull, and Ferrari finished ahead.
“We just had no pace,” Russell said. “I was just dropping like a stone, especially quite surprised versus Ferrari. We were expecting to be comfortably ahead of them, and Charles [Leclerc] was quicker, Carlos [Sainz] was catching me. Clearly we got something wrong with the tyres.”
Based on Mercedes’s performance right before the summer break, this was not how they expected to start back up. They had won 3 of the last 5 races before the break, and had a driver on the podium in all 5. The upgrades they implemented at the British Grand Prix had clearly been working well.
Russell himself had gone into the summer break on a sour and disappointing note– he crossed the finish line in 1st at the Belgian Grand Prix, but was disqualified after the race due to his car being 1.5kg under the minimum required weight. The win was inherited by his teammate Hamilton, who had finished 2nd.
Russell came back from the break looking fast on Friday and Saturday, but will leave this Sunday on a sour and disappointing note as well, seeking answers as to where the pace of his M15 car has gone.
“After the first couple of laps I thought we were on course for a podium here, I knew the overtaking was going to be difficult. I was really shocked at how fast McLaren were.
“Lando [Norris] just looked so comfortable out there, super impressive to see, but we’ve had six really strong races and then suddenly we’ve finished almost a minute behind the win today, so you don’t lose all of that performance overnight.
“Yesterday we qualified fourth and clearly didn’t get something right today. Honestly right now I’m still scratching my head. It was very tough conditions, you know, this wind with the long corners. Right now I don’t have the answers.”
The British driver knows the Mercedes team needs to learn from this weekend, but first they’ll need to figure out what exactly went so wrong. Russell has not lost confidence in his car or his team, but will want answers and solutions moving forward.
“It’s definitely the first off weekend for us since the upgrades. But I’m not too concerned, if you take the last 7 races, we’ve been really strong in 6 of them. We’ve been ahead of Ferrari in all of them, and suddenly today they looked really competitive. But we need to understand what happened because until today, we looked on course for a pretty half-decent weekend. And as I said, it just all went away from us, so I don’t know what happened.”
Mercedes started the season in a rut, taking 9 races to secure a podium before Russell did so in Canada. Since then, they’ve been competing at the top every weekend. They’re sitting at 4th in the World Constructors Championship, over 200 points ahead of Aston Martin in 5th. With 9 races left in the season, they’ll look to close the 94-point gap between themselves and 3rd place Ferrari.
Moving into Monza next weekend, Mercedes will hope to put this weekend behind them and climb back up to their new normal, fighting for podiums and wins.
