"The gap is bigger than expected": Fourth-place finisher Russell misses out on the Sprint podium

Winner of the first Grand Prix in Australia, then of the first Sprint of the year in China, George Russell was unable to repeat this performance on Saturday with his McLarenThe British driver even owes his fourth-place finish to a penalty imposed on his teammate, Kimi Antonelli, for exceeding track limits. While Russell expected not to be at the front this weekend, or at least not in such a dominant position as he has been since the start of the season, conceding thirteen seconds in nineteen laps to the McLaren of Lando Norris was not on the agenda.

« The gap is bigger than we expected. It's not a huge surprise either, considering the improvements made by the other teams.he told Canal+ « Classic Ferrari for sale McLaren and I have essentially said they brought a new car here. It would have been naive of us to imagine winning every race every weekend. We'll try to maximize our performance this afternoon. In Montreal, we'll have our upgrades, and we'll see.

It is indeed during the Canadian Grand Prix, which will take place in three weeks, that Mercedes Benz has decided to bring its first substantial package of upgrades. The Brackley-based team thus hopes to continue to benefit from the next two weeks of "break", and therefore have developed its W17 for more than seven weeks, rather than during the five weeks due to the cancellations of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix.

Toto wolffThe team principal of the German team, Wolff, admitted that the Silver Arrows had hoped to still lead the grid in this first race of the weekend. Qualifying second, Kimi Antonelli had a poor start, which, according to the Austrian, doomed the race for both Mercedes. Wolff, however, emphasized that the championship leader's poor start was not due to any error on his part, but rather to the team as a whole. Having struggled with poor starts since the beginning of the season, the Italian used the enforced break to practice his starts, notably using a steering wheel from his car his home.

“We know we’re not on the same timeline as the others regarding our development. We were hoping we could maintain our advantage, and in terms of pure pace, we weren’t far behind the others in the Sprint. But if you get a bad start, which wasn’t Kimi’s fault at all but stemmed from a mistake on our part, it’s difficult to recover. This season will be a pure development race, and those who manage to gain a few tenths of a second before their rivals will have the advantage.”

Qualifying, which will take place at 22 p.m. Paris time, will give another indication of the pace of the Mercedes, and their ability to maintain some of the substantial lead they had at the end of the first three Grands Prix.

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