Russell's performances right now are just unthinkable for someone that Mercedes thinks will be a WDC.
Finishing 41 seconds off the lead vs finishing 13 seconds off the lead is the difference between thinking your car is awful and not.
Exactly. It's worrying.
I think Russel had his race brain disorganised by the events following his move to Merc. He was doing OK at Williams and looking like the business and probably felt ready to step into a title winning car, but it turned out to not be one.
IMO, Georges issue is he doesn't know how to race wheel to wheel. At most he will pull out on the strait to get "some" clean air to cool the brakes, tires and engine. However, that's not enough when your delta is marginal. You need to take different lines, attack only in the areas you are the strongest and think several laps ahead in some cases.
dans79 wrote: ↑30 Oct 2023, 04:40IMO, Georges issue is he doesn't know how to race wheel to wheel. At most he will pull out on the strait to get "some" clean air to cool the brakes, tires and engine. However, that's not enough when your delta is marginal. You need to take different lines, attack only in the areas you are the strongest and think several laps ahead in some cases.
George's wheel to wheel style only works when you have a significant pace advantage over the car in front.
He had more issue controling the temperature overall. That's why overtaking/following was so difficult for him. That's also why he couldn't get pass Piastri, and Sainz later.
I think it's also about temperatures and tyres. In fact Lewis is pretty good at taking different lines when he's following another car, in order to keep more air on the FW. For me, the race where we saw it the most was Brazil 2021. It helps for bothHammerfist wrote: ↑30 Oct 2023, 06:18dans79 wrote: ↑30 Oct 2023, 04:40IMO, Georges issue is he doesn't know how to race wheel to wheel. At most he will pull out on the strait to get "some" clean air to cool the brakes, tires and engine. However, that's not enough when your delta is marginal. You need to take different lines, attack only in the areas you are the strongest and think several laps ahead in some cases.
George's wheel to wheel style only works when you have a significant pace advantage over the car in front.
One thing I noticed today and also in Singapore is the gap he keeps with the car in front compared to hamilton. Hamilton is able to follow so much more closely and it makes his overtaking so much more efficient in general. Russell just does not follow closely well enough. Some drivers have the ability to see the apex of the corners even with the car ahead blocking their view. Hamilton has that, Russell doesn't. He is starting to look more and more like Bottas although Bottas was not as crash prone with Lewis.
Yes they had similar age. It was the ones used in Qualy so 1 out lap, fast lap, in lap.
Not according to AMuS:
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... xiko-2023/Hamilton's medium was practically new. He had completed a round in Q1 on Saturday. Russell's medium set already had eight laps on the clock, which he had played in the first training session on Friday.