George Russell expresses his confusion over Mercedes’ disappointing performance at the Interlagos circuit. Despite both the sprint race and the main race, Hamilton and Russell struggled to make an impact and lost valuable positions and points due to a lack of competitiveness.
Russell commented after the race that they encountered a cooling problem which was uncontrollable during the last twenty laps. However, this issue did not have a significant impact on their performance.
The presence of the cooling problem alone would have been acceptable to explain Mercedes’ below-par performance. However, now there was an unexpected lack of competitiveness from the team in Brazil.
Russell described the weekend as extremely peculiar, as it turned out to be the slowest race weekend of the entire season. The team needs to assess the reasons behind this disappointing performance, as they had high expectations for this particular event.
In conclusion, Russell attributed the poor performance to the tires, as the car used in this race was the same as the one used in the previous four or five races.