Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was left scratching his head after Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifying, with George Russell third on the grid while Lewis Hamilton didn’t make it to Q3
If securing third place on the Las Vegas Grand Prix grid wasn’t enough to prove George Russell is Mercedes’ most confident driver right now, his post-session interview certainly supports the argument.
Qualifying was something of a mixed bag for Mercedes. One one hand, Lewis Hamilton had a difficult day and didn’t reach Q3. He will start the race 10th thanks to a grid bump caused by Carlos Sainz’s grid penalty.
Russell, who finished fourth on the timesheets and will take over the third grid slot, however, gave the Silver Arrows a lot more comfort. All the younger Brit could do on the chilly track was warm up his tires more effectively than his teammate had.
Naturally, this made him much more enthusiastic in his interview and appeared to be full of confidence, even though his car is still finicky. “I’m happy with the result, I felt confident around this circuit, coming into this weekend we weren’t expecting to be this competitive,” he stated.
“But, I want to be honest, as strange as it sounds, I wasn’t too concerned where we’d qualify today. As long as we were in the top 10, because it is the biggest unknown of the season going into the race.”
Russell’s biggest concern is about tyre graining on the cold track, which Mercedes saw a lot of in practice. In contrast, Ferrari have been less affected by that particular issue and, with Charles Leclerc on pole, he hinted that it is going to be very difficult to keep up with the Italians.
He described Ferrari as being “in a league of their own”. And Hamilton concurred in his own interview, in which he looked much less enthusiastic and made it clear he wished he had the same machine Charles Leclerc and Sainz to drive.
The seven-time world champion said: “It’s not that great. Yesterday was feeling a little bit better and we were looking relatively competitive. Made some changes overnight. FP3 was pretty poor, that kind of put me on the back foot and then I was just trying to recover basically in qualifying, which is never the place to do so.
“I just struggled with grip, the car just wasn’t working for me. And it’s definitely difficult when you can’t even get through Q2.” And he made it clear he has no expectations for the race when asked what he thinks he can achieve, replying: “Your guess is as good as mine.
“First, the car. Secondly, it has to do with the tire wear; we all experienced severe wear. We experienced some rear graining in FP3, so I believe that tomorrow’s success will mostly depend on how you handle it, how far you go, and where you push and where you don’t. However, I must admit that watching the Ferrari today is impressive. What a fast car!”