Remember last Sunday: at the finish of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, George Russell – who had finished 3rd in Baku – had been very virulent towards Pirelli tires, which he criticized for its totally opposite sensations between the different compounds and sometimes random behavior depending on the type of rubber.
"I think even the people who make the tires don't understand them., had then castigated the pilot Mercedes. We all need to have a serious conversation about what's going on, because we've got 2 people working like crazy to deliver the fastest car. For twenty laps of the race we had a car that could fight for the win, for the other twenty laps we had a car that probably shouldn't have been in the points and the only difference is the tyres. And that's not good enough, really."
A week later, in Singapore, Pirelli took the opportunity to respond to George Russell's criticism of their tires. Through Mario Isola, director of Pirelli Motorsport, the Italian manufacturer spoke with the Briton to discuss this "inconsistency" in the tires and their use.
"I always talk to the pilots, because it's useful to understand better, Mario Isola told the official channel of the F1. Obviously, in the heat of the moment after the race, [Russell] had some things to say and we had a chat. He explained to me that he didn't feel the performance with the medium tyres, while the car was faster with the hard tyres. Looking at the data from all the cars in Baku, we didn't find anything strange in terms of tyre performance."
Pirelli to review data with Mercedes
Mario Isola therefore links George Russell's anger to the adrenaline rush during and after the race in Baku. The Italian believes that tyres are not the only performance factor that differentiates teams from each other, and that Mercedes suffered where other teams succeeded in Azerbaijan.
“There are many elements that contribute to performance: the set-up of the car, how gently you use the tyre in the first laps, the evolution of the track. In a championship where every thousandth of a second counts in the final result, the stress is obviously very high and a small difference in performance can play a role in the final result. However, Williams achieved fairly good results with both types of tires, as did McLaren and other teams. So we should look specifically at what happened to Mercedes, but we are used to doing analyses that concern all the teams."
It remains to be seen whether this answer satisfies George Russell or not... who did not fail to complain again about the tires during qualifying in Singapore on Saturday, shouting into his radio. “I don’t understand these fucking tires!”
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