Having come tantalizingly near pole place on Saturday, Mercedes driver George Russell didn’t safe one other podium end, and he has revealed that tyre overheating is one among his automobile’s weaknesses.
George Russell began from third on the grid after his good final push lap in qualifying. Whereas he appeared snug on the medium tyres in the course of the opening stint, he quickly after began to endure from larger ranges of degradation.
The Briton elected to pit early, and whereas Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris rejoined the monitor behind Russell after their very own pit cease, the Mercedes man misplaced out to each the Ferrari and McLaren driver to complete fifth in Jeddah.
His team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli began from P5 on the grid, and appeared sturdy within the early phases of the race. Nonetheless, his tempo pale because the race progressed, and he even clipped the wall at one level.
Though Ferrari’s seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton appeared a lot stronger in the course of the second stint, the Bologna-born managed to extract sufficient from his W16 to dissuade the Briton from chasing too exhausting behind.
Commenting on his race in Jeddah, Russell said that his tempo was restricted by the overheating of his tyres.
“[Sunday ]was all in regards to the tyres and sadly, ours have been affected by overheating. I used to be pushing to stick with Verstappen in the beginning of the second stint, but it surely rapidly turned clear that we weren’t going to have the ability to grasp on.
“I attempted to handle the tyres a bit of extra however, with the tyre age offset they’d constructed, Leclerc and Norris have been in a position to transfer forward. After that, my tyres dropped off the cliff and it was all about simply bringing the automobile residence in P5.
Reflecting on his W16’s race tempo, Russell said: “In the end, we didn’t have the tempo immediately. Even when we had managed extra at completely different factors, that was the utmost accessible to us this night.
“We are going to take the positives we will from this weekend. We all know that tyre overheating is a weak spot of our automobile in the mean time. Everybody is targeted on bettering that. We must settle for coming residence fifth on a nasty day however all of us need to make steps in that space, and rapidly.”
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