Lewis Hamilton and George Russell on “gut feeling” of Mercedes floor conundrum

Mercedes enter the F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix grappling with decisions to make about their floor.

Mercedes introduced a new floor and diffuser at Spa, where Lewis Hamilton won to extend a brilliant record of three victories in four grands prix.

But at the two most recent rounds Mercedes’ pace has slumped, creating a debate about whether they should stick to their guns or revert to the pre-Spa floor.

“There are lots of question marks,” said Hamilton in Baku where Crash.net are in the paddock.

“We are trying to understand it. It could be a number of things - it could be track dependent, it could be the upgrade.

“My gut is telling me that it’s the upgrade. It’s hard to see the difference between the two.

“We will try this weekend to roll back on some of it, and see if we can spot it. There is a lot of work going on to analyse it because it gives the team direction in development for this car, and for next year as well.”

George Russell said: “The upgrade wasn’t a substantial performance improvement.

“Sometimes you've got to look at things objectively. We brought a new floor and we dropped in performance. That was the main thing that changed.

“We knew that the upgrade wasn’t going to set the world on fire, it was just another step in the direction that we’d been pursuing.

“Reversing back to the pre-Spa iteration of floor - if everything was correct on paper, it was a small delta. It’s better the devil you know. What know exactly what that floor offers, and we know what the set-up should be.

“Sometimes with a new upgrade it takes a number of races to learn and understand.”

Russell added: “I don’t think, no matter the performance this weekend, we will come away and conclusively say that the floor was or was not the problem.

“It’s not too long until we’ll have another upgrade which will change things once again.”

Hamilton has won twice this season, and Russell once, as the field has converged to rob Red Bull of their dominance.

McLaren enter Azerbaijan with the quickest car and as the biggest threat to Red Bull.

“Formula 1 is more competitive than we’ve seen it for 10 years, maybe, in terms of the number of drivers who can compete for good results,” Russell said.

“Last year, two tenths off the pace, you’d finish in the same position. Red Bull could have an off-weekend by three tenths and would still win the race.

“We’ve had two weekends where we’ve dipped in form. But it could have swung in the other direction. I was third in Zandvoort and, if the race had panned out differently, I could have ended up on a podium and we wouldn’t be talking about a dip in performance.

“Unless you nail your weekends, you will be punished for it.”