“I don't think we would have qualified much higher”: George Russell reflects on a disappointing outing in the Azerbaijan F1 GP

Mercedes driver George Russell mentioned that he could not have qualified much higher than the fourth row in the F1 2023 Azerbaijan GP qualifying session.

The young Briton was unable to make the Q3 and was knocked out by his teammate Lewis Hamilton by 0.004 seconds. However, in his post-quali interview, Russell surprisingly stated that he could have gotten much higher than P8 as he believed that the car did not have the pace of its rivals.

Speaking to Sky Sports, George Russell said:

"We are not fast enough this weekend, obviously. I would have loved to have been in Q3. I gave it everything. The lap was strong, I made a mistake in my last one, which may have just crept me into Q3, but I don’t think we’d have been able to qualify much higher than P8."

"It’s a funny sport this one, sometimes, going from qualifying on the front row [in Australia] to myself being out in Q2 and Lewis just getting in with P10 [in Q2]. We’ve got another chance tomorrow, but not an ideal Friday, for sure.”

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"I see no reason why we can’t fight back on Sunday" - George Russell

The Briton stated that despite starting outside the Top 10 for Sunday's race, he was optimistic that he could fight back and score some good points.

George Russell said:

“I think right now we wouldn’t really know what to change to find the pace we need around this track. It’s definitely a unique one, definitely an outlier, compared to the first three races we’ve been to."

“Of all the tracks to 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 [we’ll] work hard, [I’ll] try and improve my driving, try and work with the team to see what we can do and come back stronger.”

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff also provided an update on when the team will bring its first upgrade, adding:

"We have the car in a good window, it is just generally the car is not stable for the drivers and doesn't have enough load. We haven't put any upgrades on the car that will come for Imola, so we need to make the best out of this package."

It will be fascinating to see if George Russell can turn his weekend around tomorrow (Sprint Race) to better prepare himself for Sunday.