{"id":908491,"date":"2026-09-25T00:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T00:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/908491\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T00:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T00:34:14","slug":"why-mercedes-huge-baku-practice-advantage-may-not-be-the-real-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/908491\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mercedes\u2019 huge Baku practice advantage may not be the real picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes made a very strong statement during Thursday\u2019s practice sessions at the Baku City Circuit. George Russell<\/a> topped the times\u00a0in both sessions, with the first non-Mercedes car almost a second adrift at the end of the day (Max Verstappen<\/a> at 0.827s).
Mercedes will introduce its long-awaited upgrade package for the W17 in Malaysia, but even without new parts on the car, rivals have been highly impressed by Russell\u2019s pace.<\/p>\n

Red Bull can count on the final major upgrade package for the RB22 this week, but technical director Pierre Wach\u00e9 admits he had not expected such a large deficit to the Mercedes works team.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I didn’t expect this big gap, mainly on the straights. Afterwards we have to\u00a0analyse if it’s coming from a tow [or something else]. But yes, we have work to do to achieve what they have achieved\u201d, Wach\u00e9 said when asked about the gap by Motorsport.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that it’s closer, but it looks like they are a lot quicker than us. We will see what we can do to make the car quicker, but if this is the real delta, then it will be tough for us.\u201d
Isack Hadjar, who felt completely fine physically on his return behind the wheel, fears that Mercedes will genuinely be out of Red Bull\u2019s reach on Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bit, [and thinking] why they are so far away. I think that’s very impressive. I think we have a good car, we’ve been in the mix with\u00a0McLaren and Ferrari, but yeah, Mercedes, they are out of touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"George <\/p>\n

George Russell, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Mercedes itself, however, is not yet fully convinced that it is a class above everyone else. Deputy team principal Bradley Lord, who is taking charge this weekend in Toto Wolff\u2019s absence, stresses that his team absolutely should not celebrate too soon.
\u201cI don’t think it’s a representative gap, honestly. We ran more timed laps on the soft tyre in FP2. Max only had one go, so did the McLarens.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably don’t read too much into it, because every timed lap you did, the lap times were improving. We did one more than everyone else, and therefore probably found a bit more in the track and a bit more in the\u00a0tyre than they were able to.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, Russell did look commanding throughout the entire day of practice. The Briton concluded in Madrid that he is no longer in the title fight and can only fight for race wins, but the start of the Baku race weekend has proved very promising.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge was pretty sick here last year and still finished P2. So it’s a circuit\u2026 I mean, he goes well at every circuit, but this is one where traditionally he’s had some really strong results\u201d, Lord said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that’s what you’re looking for as a team, that if one car hits trouble, the other one’s right up there and leading the way. He’s done that today and hopefully can continue doing that through the rest of the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Lord mentions that \u201cone car hits trouble\u201d, those words logically refer to\u00a0Kimi Antonelli. The championship leader suffered a hydraulic problem during the first practice session, costing him track time \u2013 a factor that is even more important than usual on a street circuit.<\/p>\n

\"Fan <\/p>\n

Fan of George Russell, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Michael Potts \/ LAT images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously it’s put him behind the curve a little bit, so he’s just missing laps and missing time out on track, but equally, it was a mega job from the mechanics\u201d, Lord continued.\u00a0\u201cThe car came back, I think, 15 minutes after practice, and it was ready to go just as the red flag came out in FP2. So they did an epic job to swap the engine, get the old one out and the new one in.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo penalty, because it’s one that’s already in the pool, and yeah, we were ready to go. So we\u2019ve at least salvaged as much of the session as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end result is two Mercedes cars at the top with a large gap to the rest. That has impressed the competition, although Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur played down the significance of Thursday\u2019s times: \u201cI\u2019m getting too old to pay too much attention to Friday!\u201d<\/p>\n

When it is pointed out that it is actually still Thursday,\u00a0Vasseur concludes with a laugh: \u201cFriday is useless, imagine the Thursday!\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes made a very strong statement during Thursday\u2019s practice sessions at the Baku City Circuit. George Russell topped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3032,77894,77895,49,48,578,576,577,3024,1881,82,313824],"class_list":["post-908491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-azerbaijan-gp","tag-baku-city-circuit","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","tag-sports","tag-why-mercedesu2019-huge-baku-practice-advantage-may-not-be-the-real-picture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908491","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=908491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}