Russell indicated he might have picked up damage after Antonelli's run through the gravel trap
Having qualified P13 for Saturday’s F1 Sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix, George Russell indicated that he might have picked up damage after his team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli's run through the gravel trap.
Mercedes opted to use the Hard compound tyre in the sole free practice session on this Sprint weekend, followed by a short single lap run on the Medium.
Having finished that session in P4 and P6 respectively, the Brackley-based outfit had hoped to be fighting for the front rows of the grid in the sprint qualifying for the Spa F1 Sprint.
However, things evolved very differently in late afternoon in Belgium. Kimi Antonelli spun on his first effort in SQ1 and picked up sizeable floor damage which, whilst he was still able to complete a second effort, left him lacking performance and in P20.
George Russell was able to progress to SQ2 but on his solitary effort in that 10-minute segment was unable to extract the necessary performance and finished in P13.
Reflecting on his Friday at Spa, Russell noted: "We had good pace in FP1, but I ran through a lot of the gravel thrown up by Kimi’s off in SQ1. In the rest of that segment of Sprint Qualifying, and my lap in SQ2, the car didn’t respond as it was before.
"We therefore need to pick through the data and look at the car to see if we suffered any damage. Obviously, it is a shock to be knocked out in P13 and not something we were predicting as we headed into the session.
"I am sure, given the size of the gap to our usual competitors, that there is a reason we will find for this deficit.
Signing off with a word for the rest of the weekend, Russell stated: "Our attention now turns to tomorrow. We will hopefully be able to show more of the pace that we saw in FP1.
"Whilst scoring points in the Sprint will be difficult, we know the most important parts of the weekend are still to come with Qualifying and the Grand Prix itself. We will be working hard to put in a performance more representative of ourselves then."
