Two weeks after his victory in Canada, George Russell was deeply disappointed to finish over a minute behind the winner in Austria yesterday.
The Mercedes driver headed the opening practice session for the Austrian Grand Prix in relatively cool conditions on Friday. But track surface temperatures rose above 50C on race day and Russell did not have the pace to challenge the McLaren or Ferrari drivers.
Russell said the team’s slump in performance after their success in cooler conditions at Montreal made their problem obvious. “We know the limitations of our car and these two last race weekends can’t be clearer,” he said.
“When we’re in Canada and we have no tyre overheating, we’re the quickest. When we come to tracks where there’s lots of tyre overheating, such as here, Imola, Barcelona, we’re nowhere. So we need to solve that issue.”
The team’s difficulties in higher temperatures have been consistent across recent seasons, said Russell. “It’s been two years now. We don’t have too many answers just yet.
“We’ve got plenty of ideas. But we need to get on top of it, and especially ahead to next year, because ultimately, tyres are always going to be overheating.
“You’re only going to have a few races on a calendar that they’re not. We sort of reap those rewards in the likes of Vegas or Canada, Silverstone last year. But F1 tends to race in the summer everywhere we go. I wish it was a winter series!”
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However the team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin believes the race has shed light on the problems they are encountering. “The high temperatures here just showed where our weakness is again, and we will work really hard to solve this for the upcoming races,” he said.
“After struggling this much in hot races, we now have a better understanding of where we stand and what needs to be done to perform better.”
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