Lewis Hamilton and George Russell seek to grasp why Mercedes failed to realize optimum results on the Italian Grand Prix because the Formula 1 hierarchy appears unpredictable.
Hamilton won each the second and third practice sessions at Monza, in addition to Q2, but he and Russell ultimately finished sixth and third in qualifying, and only finished fifth and seventh within the race at Monza in that order.
Hamilton was just 22.8 seconds behind race winner Charles Leclerc, but said the Mercedes were fighting “more serious degradation” and were also “generally off by one or two tenths” of a second per lap in race conditions.
Asked concerning the balance of the W15, the seven-time world champion added: “It was OK, nothing special. Either grainy left front or grainy left rear. We just didn't have the pace. We should go and take a look at to grasp why.
“Apart from looking better on Friday, we were going slower all weekend, or others were faster, or we were too weak and they were too heavy, who knows?”
Russell's relatively poor performance was largely as a result of a mistake in the primary corner of the primary lap, which forced him onto the escape road and immediately dropped him to seventh place. Losing “a huge amount of power” as a result of front wing damage within the incident, he was also forced to make an earlier-than-planned pit stop.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, driving straight
Photo: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
The incident has badly damaged his possibilities of taking victory, or perhaps a podium finish, however the Mercedes driver believes it might have been a troublesome task for him anyway.
“I just got caught by Oscar” [Piastri]“braking point and I touched the brakes, I started to lock up because I was so close to him and I had to get around him,” Russell said. “It’s quite annoying when the entire weekend goes by so quickly, but the pace, I don’t think we could sustain with the McLarens and Ferraris.
“It was a really disappointing day, but in the end we didn't have the pace. The sport is a bit strange now, with Red Bull losing so much pace. Ferrari seemed to struggle at Zandvoort and in all the previous races, but they were so quick at Zandvoort on Sunday and all this weekend, so I don't really know.”
Meanwhile, Hamilton hopes the upcoming improvements, albeit minor, will help the team fight back against the opposite top teams in spite of everything six cars from McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes qualified for Monza by two tenths of a second.
“There will definitely be some performances in the next few races,” he said. “We have little pieces. I don’t know if there’s something big coming, but hopefully we’ll have more performances.”
Two-time winner of the last five rounds, Hamilton subsequently expects “another chance to fight for victory at some stage”, explaining: “Hopefully if we make some progress, some of the tracks will be a little bit better than ours [at Monza].”
