George Russell ended the first day of the Spanish Grand Prix in second place. The Mercedes F1 driver welcomed a stronger performance from his car but remains concerned about what they can achieve in Sunday’s race.
“The qualifying runs were okay, it’s great to be back where the car was after a few tough races. However, the long-run pace isn’t great and our goal is to improve that,” Russell said.
“We need to understand what we’re missing compared to our rivals, and that’s our main concern. Other than that, I felt pretty comfortable, I enjoy driving this track, but it’s hot, everything’s sticky, and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
Asked about the impact of the technical directive aimed at reducing front wing flexibility, the Brit offered a very ironic comment about McLaren, whose drivers topped both sessions: “Clearly it massively slowed McLaren down! So that’s good news!”
Andrea Kimi Antonelli didn’t have the best Friday but remains optimistic for the rest of the weekend: “I wanted to check the floor, but I suffered from a bit of bouncing at high speed, more than usual. We’ll need to see if it did anything to the floor, but from the first laps, there was high-speed bouncing.”
“The car was much better in FP2, I felt a lot more confident and I managed to get into a rhythm on the long runs. I took a different approach from George in FP2, I started out quicker and he was faster later on. We’ll try to find the right balance for Sunday.”
The Italian hopes he and Russell can fight for pole position against McLaren: “That’s the target. The team is heading in the right direction, and on my side, I see where I need to improve, and we’ll try to do our best tomorrow.”
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