Russell says the latest W15 floor is working
George Russell is adamant that the latest Mercedes floor upgrade was not the cause of the team’s difficult Dutch GP weekend.
The floor was tried and abandoned at Spa, and then brought back for Zandvoort after the team felt it had a better understanding of it.
Russell and team mate could Lewis Hamilton manage only seventh and eighth places after a weekend that saw them struggling at times with snap oversteer.
“In Zandvoort we definitely underachieved,” said Russell. “And we have a number of ideas why that was. I think it was a very challenging weekend with the really strong winds, it’s a very old tarmac, a lot of sliding around, and McLaren were exceptional.
“But I hope and we expect this weekend to be slightly more positive after the learnings we took from Zandvoort.
“It was one of the changes we made to the car that probably we knew was not quite the direction we wanted to go, but it wasn’t quite that obvious in the moment during the race weekend.
“It was only afterwards, when we did the analysis, it was sort of like that’s the area where we lost out, we need to avoid that at all costs moving forward.”
Russell was adamant that the floor was not the issue in the Netherlands.
“I think this weekend will be another good opportunity to test it,” he said. “Ultimately, when you bring an upgrade to the car, you’re talking a tenth or two maximum, but a performance can swing by a number of tenths, race-to-race.
“So if you have an off-weekend which coincides with an upgrade, it’s very, very quick to say, must be the upgrade. But if you do six races in a row with the same package, your performance can fluctuate by half a second compared to your rivals.
“So I’m confident the floor is working as we expect. And I think the problems we faced in Zandvoort weren’t due to the upgrade.
“Now we’ve got another opportunity this weekend, and maybe we conclude something different after Monza, but I’m confident it’s working as we as we think.”
Russell agreed that it was important that the team learned from the data.
“Of course you’ve always got to be honest with yourself, but ultimately, you’ve got to trust the numbers,” he said.
“If you don’t trust the numbers, you’re in a world of pain. And we go from Zandvoort, that’s high downforce, it was cold, it was windy, to Monza, that’s low downforce, very grippy circuit, C5 tyre.
“It’s sort of not comparable weekend-to-weekend, and even session-to-session, the track evolves probably two seconds across the course of the day when you’ve got F3, F2 the Porsches driving. Even testing in FP1 and changing something for FP2 it’s a totally different session again.”
Adam Cooper F1 