Mercedes didn’t exactly have a successful weekend in Brazil. Hamilton finished eighth, Russell had to retire.
Sky Sports reminded Hamilton that there are only two races left in the season.
“Yes. Thank God,” Hamilton responded. “It didn’t feel as catastrophic as yesterday. Yesterday I literally had no tires left, they were worn to zero. I feel like I had a better race today in terms of tire management. I drove as best I could.’
“There are times when the car works and times when it doesn’t. It’s very inconsistent throughout the round, so we have to figure out what it is. Then we’re also really slow on the straights and the car slides again in the corners.”
In an interview with Autosport, Hamilton was more specific. “The floor simply does not stick the car to the track. It forced us to upgrade to a larger wing. Then we have huge resistance on the straights.”
“We’re losing a lot of time on the straights, there’s nothing I can do about it, and we’re sliding in the corners. We have to look at why it happened on this rough track.’
“It’s just that our tires are overheating, we’re slow on the straights, we don’t have grip in the corners,” summed up Hamilton.
Hamilton said he hoped the team would learn from today. “I’m sure we’ll look at it and find things we should have done differently, but it’s difficult with one training session. I’m still proud of the team. They’ve come here and done their job, they’re keeping their heads up and we’ve got to keep doing that.”
Russell didn’t finish
George Russell had to withdraw from the race due to overheating of the car. “We obviously did something wrong this weekend, we’re not too sure what it was yet, but we just didn’t have good speed,” Russell said.
“We thought yesterday might have been a one-off, but obviously it wasn’t, so we have to regroup and try to make sense of it. 12 months ago it was our strongest race of the year, 12 months later it’s by far our weakest race of the year, so it’s very strange.”
“The car was just slow this weekend. The tires were sliding and I think what we were doing was the maximum. Something doesn’t sit right with me, you just don’t suddenly lose a second of performance and you don’t turn from a car fighting for podiums to a car fighting only for points.”
