Mercedes have shared how George Russell was battling a \u201cvery, very oversteery\u201d car in the closing stages of the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, due to an \u201cincorrect\u201d balance adjustment during his final pit stop.<\/p>\n
Russell<\/a> finished Sunday\u2019s race in second position, behind Ferrari<\/a> rival Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, with Mercedes<\/a> opting for a two-stop approach and the Scuderia going aggressive on a three-stop plan \u2013 making their final pit lane visit under the Virtual Safety Car.<\/p>\n That was after championship leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a> \u2013 who had passed Russell with five laps to go, having appeared more comfortable behind the wheel as the race wore on \u2013 ground to a halt and retired amid technical problems.<\/p>\n Reflecting on the encounter in Mercedes\u2019 post-Barcelona debrief video, Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord said: \u201cIn theory that is a race we could have won. We had really strong pace with George on the medium tyre in the opening stint, and Kimi was very strong on the hard tyres in stints two and three, where George was a bit less comfortable with the car.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we could only have won it if we\u2019d have got everything right. We lost race time with the two drivers fighting each other in that second stint, and then also in the third stint. Obviously with Kimi, ultimately we had a reliability failure that cost him any chance of finishing at all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s true to say, Ferrari were a little bit fortunate with the VSC that put Lewis out on track ahead of our cars at that final pit stop. Had that not happened, then he\u2019d have had to fight his way through the field.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean the result would have necessarily changed, but we could have put ourselves in a stronger position to claim that win.\u201d<\/p>\n Lord then explained the specific issue Mercedes encountered at Russell\u2019s third stop, which contributed to his car balance troubles across the last stint.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was great to see George, after a difficult run of results in the last few Grands Prix, back at his best, taking pole, fighting for the race win,\u201d Lord commented.<\/p>\n \u201c[He was] doing that notwithstanding the fact that in our final pit stop, we actually incorrectly adjusted the front wing, owing to a problem with the adjuster gun. It meant he was driving with a very, very oversteery balance that certainly compromised his pace in the final stages.\u201d<\/p>\n Lord also offered some thoughts on the growing threat from Ferrari, with Hamilton cutting Antonelli\u2019s Drivers\u2019 Championship<\/a> lead to 41 points, and Mercedes also edging closer in the Teams\u2019 Championship<\/a> fight.<\/p>\n \u201cPerformance is changing from weekend to weekend as teams bring upgrade packages, and conditions and circuit requirements vary,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cThis weekend in Barcelona, Ferrari brought a substantial update to their car, and they took a really clear step forward, both in one-lap pace, where Lewis was fighting for pole position, and then obviously in the race as well, where ultimately they took their first win of the season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve said all along this year that notwithstanding our strong start to the season, it\u2019s a development race, and we\u2019re going to need to keep bringing performance each weekend \u2013 both in smaller and bigger update packages \u2013 if we want to continue to race at the front of the field.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes have shared how George Russell was battling a \u201cvery, very oversteery\u201d car in the closing stages of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-745230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}