Russell reveals why Mercedes lost its competitiveness from first to second practice session

Having dominated the opening practice session, Mercedes racer George Russell was unable to maintain his competitiveness in the second one-hour session, with the Briton claiming that the W15 did not have the same balance in the early evening session.

Mercedes had an impressive opening session at the Austrian Grand Prix. George Russell managed to carry over his fine form from Montreal to dominate the one-hour session, setting the benchmark both on the hard and the soft compound.

However, the Brackley-based squad endured a slight setback in the second one-hour session as Russell only managed to set the sixth quickest time while his team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli finished outside the top ten in P11.

Speaking of his day, Russell commented: "We struggled a bit today, but the afternoon session was aligned with our pre-weekend expectations. We had strong single lap pace in FP2 which was a slight surprise for us.

"The car balance felt good but jumping into FP2, we took a little bit of a step back. We will look into that overnight and aim to return towards the sweet spot we found within the first hour of practice.

"We’ll be doing our best tomorrow but seeing the McLarens pace, we might struggle to fight for pole position. Hopefully we can be in the mix for the top five, but we are also aware of how much race pace dictates your result here.

"The tarmac is abrasive here and managing that has not been a strength of ours recently. We will work hard to optimise the car though and see what we can do over the rest of the weekend," concluded Russell.