George Russell is suffering with the 2022 Mercedes. The driver ended the first day of free practice discouraged by the situation in Azerbaijan
What will become of Mercedes at the Azerbaijan GP? After the optimism in Spain, the team faces its second straight weekend on a street track where the porpoising is too great for the Brits to make the car work. According to George Russell, it's hard to imagine Mercedes catching up with the rivals in front.
The Englishman, the only driver of the season to finish in the top-5 of all races so far in 2022, showed pessimism about getting much out of the W13 at the weekend. In TL2 that best reflected the teams' condition on Friday, Russell was seventh and saw Lewis Hamilton only 12th.
"It was a complicated day. We weren't as competitive as we would have liked. It's a track where getting the tires in the right window of use is difficult. We've already seen the fastest laps at the end of TL2 and how Ferrari and Red Bull can get more time out of it. They are inherently faster cars than ours. We're doing our best to catch up with them," Russell said.
Asked if tire warm-ups will be an important part of the rest of the weekend, he nodded.
"I think so. We're not quite in control of the tires yet. And I also don't think we're the only team that needs to recover that disadvantage," he finished.
GRANDE PRÊMIO follows all the activities LIVE and IN REAL TIME. On Saturday, TL3 is scheduled for 8am [GMT-3], while qualifying starts at 11am.