George Russell blames the Australian GP circuit for Mercedes’ disappointing qualifying performance

George Russell feels Mercedes W15 is unsuitable nature of the Australian GP.

George Russell (via imago)

Mercedes have had a very disappointing start to the 2024 Formula 1 season. The Australian Grand Prix weekend up until now has just added to the overall disappointing start to their season, with the qualifying session in Australia seeing seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton and fellow Briton George Russell qualifying P11 and P7 respectively.

After the qualifying sessions concluded, George Russell spoke about how Albert Park, the circuit in Melbourne doesn’t suit their car, the W15. He also added how the W15 seems to have a very short performance window that is getting very tricky to maneuver and confirmed that the team has a lot of work to do in order to fix the poor high-speed corner performance of the car.

We know where we need to improve the car and that is in the high-speed corners. Unfortunately, there are a decent amount of those here in Melbourne, so this circuit is definitely not playing to our strengths.

George Russell said after the qualifying sessions in Melbourne.

This seems to be a recurring theme as throughout the FP sessions both drivers struggled through the high-speed corners. Moreover, from the driver feedback and data, it can be concluded that the W15 is massively lacking in high-speed corners and straight-line speed, making the Albert Park circuit very tricky for Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

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Mercedes’s Andrew Shovlin is shocked by performance drop of W15

With the qualifying result being disappointing for the Silver Arrows Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin was asked to comment about it. He spoke about how the pace of the W15 just seemed to vanish between FP3 and qualifying later on in the morning.

Lewis Hamilton and Andrew Shovlin (via imago)

It felt like we’d made good progress overnight and the car was working well across FP3 this morning. However, that pace didn’t seem to carry into qualifying and we finished a disappointing P7 and P11. The track was a little hotter and it was a little windier in qualifying, but that does not fully explain why the car was well behaved in one session and such a handful the next.

Andrew Shovlin said.

The engineer also concluded that all was not lost after the lackluster qualifying. He spoke about how Albert Park, the track in Australia is always full of incidents and anything can happen. Moreover, with the Grand Prix being tomorrow, only time will tell if the Silver Arrows will be able to obtain a suitable result tomorrow.