Russell insists he needs to ‘step up my game’ in Baku

It was a mixed day for Mercedes in Baku, with Lewis Hamilton showing a decent turn of speed for the team as he finished second and third in FP1 and FP2 respectively. But George Russell had a much tougher day, missing out on some running thanks to reliability woes – and he admitted to ‘struggling’ with the car out on track.

Russell finished eighth and ninth in the two sessions, but he missed the start of FP2 after the team noticed something irregular in his data and opted to swap his power unit between the two sessions.

He was then out of sync with the rest on both his longer runs and flying laps, before his session was curtailed early when another issue was spotted.

“Not sure what happened, we just knew we had to change the engine as we had a problem after FP1,” Russell said afterwards. “Obviously delayed the session and then we had a problem at the end of the session too. So it wasn’t our finest Friday that’s for sure.

Russell still looking for answers after power unit change ahead of FP2

“The problem was the engine in FP1, and then at the end it was a sensor failure, so we actually pitted as we thought we had a water leak, but we didn’t. So, it was feeling okay, it wasn’t feeling superb for me out there, I was struggling.”

Russell ran the mediums in FP1 and the hard compound in FP2, Mercedes the only team other than Alpine to test out the C3 rubber on Friday. But on a dirty and dusty track, that didn’t seem to help Russell get a feel for how the W15 is handling here, especially considering the team have reverted to the older spec floor on both cars.

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“I was definitely off the pace compared to Lewis, I was struggling with confidence in the car and getting the tyres in the right window, so I need to step up my game a bit for tomorrow and try and close that gap,” Russell concluded.

As for Hamilton, on paper his day was much better than Russell’s, with two top three finishes. But he remains unsure as to quite where Mercedes will slot into the pecking order, especially given the other teams at the front will likely be making a step up on Saturday with engine modes.

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN - SEPTEMBER 13: Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain driving the (44) Mercedes AMG — Hamilton had a very good Friday in Baku

“It was a really good day,” Hamilton said after the session. “I enjoyed today, hit the ground running from the get go, made incremental steps with the set-up. For once it felt like we didn’t have any steps that we had to come back on, it was like consistently building.

“I don’t know how my long run is compared to others, we didn’t get a huge amount of laps. Yeah, I think Red Bull seem pretty quick, as does the Ferrari, but we are there or thereabouts.

“I think we’ll stay cautious and try and do the best we can with what we have. I hope that we are [as] close to the front as it seems maybe, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”

As to that tactical decision to revert to the older floor, Hamilton wouldn’t be drawn too much on the difference it made. But it certainly looked to be a positive decision given where he ended up on the leaderboard, just 0.066s off Charles Leclerc’s fastest time in FP2.

“It is really difficult to say what the car would have felt like with the other floor here,” Hamilton concluded. “It’s hard to feel a lot of difference between the two, but I’m not unhappy with the one we have.”