Mercedes F1 Faces Setback at Spa Behind Rivals

Mercedes F1 endures challenges at Spa, trailing behind top competitors McLaren and Red Bull in performance.

George Russell expressed cautious skepticism about Mercedes F1’s performance at the end of the first day of the Belgian Grand Prix. He noted that his team lagged behind the day’s top contenders at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

“It’s always great to be here at Spa, the track is very fast this year due to resurfacing. We need to assess this evening what we can do because McLaren is ahead of us, and so is Red Bull. We must continue our evaluations,” Russell stated when asked about the challenges ahead.

“It’s only been ten minutes since I got out of the car, but I was running with fuel and I think the McLarens were at full power, which gives them a few tenths on this circuit. Tomorrow will be a different day, we might find more tonight, but normally we have a good Friday and others less so. Hopefully, it will be the reverse.”

Lewis Hamilton was even more circumspect, experiencing one of his worst days in recent weeks. While not yet despairing, the British driver hoped for rain to aim for a strong result.

“It was quite a bad day. I don’t know what to say. Things had been going very well in the last races and today was very different. We worked on it, the first session was very bad, it got better in the second,” Hamilton remarked.

“We made some changes, and things improved until we switched to soft tyres. I couldn’t make any improvements, and we had some balance issues. It was a bit better in this session, as it was for everyone. It’s not great to be 1.2 seconds off.”

Informed that rain was still expected tomorrow, he showed enthusiasm: “Fantastic! Because if it’s dry, we are not performing well at the moment. We will obviously make changes for tomorrow. But if it rains, that might help us a bit and we can do a better job because the car should be slightly better than in the dry.”