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George Russell hopes to unlock more performance out of his Mercedes after securing fifth place in the Miami Grand Prix. The Briton believes his team need to figure out where they lost performance after free practice on Friday, when they were significantly more competitive.
On being asked if his performance was aided purely by the safety car, Russell replied:
“I would’ve ended up P7, which I think given where we were yesterday, that is a relatively good result, specially after lap 1. But there’s a fast racing car there somewhere, we don't know how to get that. We had to get our performance we showed on Friday, and it suddenly disappeared yesterday.”
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Starting in P12, George Russell slipped down to P16 after the start. He said seventh place would still have been a good recovery from the dismal qualifying and believes the team needs to understand where they lost their performance after Friday.
From what is understood, the Mercedes cars had raised their ride height on Friday, which reduced their porpoising and helped them gain performance. Both drivers were in the top three in terms of lap times. However, in FP3 on Saturday, they reduced the ride height, which brought back the porpoising issue. Unfortunately, the porpoising did not improve even when they reverted back to Friday's set-up. The loss of performance was due to the circuit, which by then was grippier, resulting in both drivers being unable to find performance in qualifying.
George Russell believes his fifth place result in Miami was a fluke
The new Mercedes driver believes his result in the Miami GP was a good one, but a fluke. Suggesting that their pace had improved, George Russell was cautiously optimistic about his expectations and felt the team was still far from the front runners.
The Briton was running seventh when the virtual safety car period helped him make the right strategy call to pit for new tires. A new set of medium tires with ten laps left helped him to overtake both Valtteri Bottas and his own team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
Summarizing his performance after the race, Russell said:
“You sound like a bit of a genius when you think of it like that, but a total fluke. It was obviously a good day to come home in P5, specially after lap 1 I was down to P16 I thought look this is going to be a long afternoon. Though we showed some good pace, still far from where we were on Friday, we need to understand why that is and yeah P5.”
Russell's latest result is the fifth consecutive top five finish for the Mercedes driver, which has placed him fourth in the Driver Standings. George Russell is currently seven points behind Sergio Perez and six points ahead of Carlos Sainz.
