George Russell confident Mercedes new floor ‘working as expected’ despite Zandvoort woes
"I am confident the floor is working as we expect and I think the problems we faced at Zandvoort weren’t due to the upgrade."
George Russell believes Mercedes’ recent floor wasn’t the reason for their difficult F1 weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Mercedes endured a tricky race on Sunday at Zandvoort, finishing seventh and eighth respectively.
Heading into the Dutch GP, Mercedes had been the in-form team, winning three of the previous four races.
The reason for their lack of pace was unclear with Toto Wolff suggesting it was a lack of practice in dry conditions for their poor form.
Mercedes’ recent floor upgrade has also attracted some attention, which was introduced at the Belgian GP before being ditched for the remainder of the weekend.
Mercedes technical director James Allison has admitted they still don’t know if it’s working as intended.
However, speaking to media including Crash.net at Monza, Russell shed light on the situation around the floor.
“This weekend will be another opportunity for us to test it,” he said. “Ultimately, when you bring an upgrade to the car you’re talking a tenth or two maximum, but the performance swings by a number of tenths race to race. If you have an off weekend which coincides with an upgrade it’s very quick to say ‘it must be the upgrade!’ but if you do six races in a row with the same package your performance will fluctuate by half a second compared to your rivals.
“I am confident the floor is working as we expect and I think the problems we faced at Zandvoort weren’t due to the upgrade. Now, we’ve got another opportunity this weekend.
“Maybe we can do something different after Monza. I am confident it’s working as we think.”
Looking back to Zandvoort, Russell admitted that Mercedes “underperformed” as they look to bounce back at Monza this weekend.
“In Zandvoort, we definitely underachieved,” he explained. “We had a number of ideas why that was. I think it was a very challenging weekend with really strong winds. It was a very old tarmac, a lot of sliding around. McLaren were exceptional, but I hope and expect this week to be slightly more positive after the learnings we took from Zandvoort. It was one of the changes we made to the car that we knew was not quite in the direction we wanted to go.
“But it wasn't quite that obvious in the moment during the race weekend. It was only afterwards when we did the analysis, that's the area where we lost out. We need to avoid that at all costs and move forward.”
