Mercedes
Antonelli had a tricky practice session and wound up down the order. His Sprint Qualifying started better, but he had a messy lap in SQ2 and ran wide to boot, which cost him the chance to progress. That left Russell to fly the flag for the team, and he opted to come out first in SQ3 and set his lap time nice and early. He sacrificed some track evolution for clean air, and wound up a solid fifth.
George Russell, 5th, 1:32.888
“That wasn’t the maximum we could have achieved today but it’s fair to say that we were never in the fight for Sprint pole. Nico (Hulkenberg) put in an amazing lap to take P4; having a Kick Sauber ahead of us wasn’t what we expected but well done to him and his team.
“As we’ve been saying all year, on our good days we’re in the battle for the win and on our bad days we are P5. We just got P5 today; hopefully we have a better race car than a qualifying one though. We also know it can be tricky to hit the ground running on Sprint weekends so we will do what we can in the Sprint race itself and then look to improve the car for qualifying and Sunday’s race.”
Kimi Antonelli, 11th, 1:34.018
“It is disappointing to get knocked out in SQ2 and by such a small margin too. I felt good in the car in SQ1 and only needed the one lap to get through. I had two big lock-ups on my final lap in SQ2 though and that ultimately cost me. We definitely had the pace to get into SQ3 and fight for the top five, so it is frustrating. We will reset overnight though, push as hard as we can in the Sprint and then try to have a better qualifying tomorrow afternoon.
“Our long run pace in FP1 was more encouraging than our single lap work. Hopefully that bodes well for Sunday. We know that we won’t be able to show that though if we don’t start near the front of the field. We will work hard to improve the car ahead of qualifying, using the Sprint to build our learning, and try our best to have a better session than we’ve just enjoyed.”
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
“That was a frustrating Friday here in Austin. It can be difficult to get the car dialled in immediately on a sprint weekend, particularly on a circuit as challenging as this. It is important to do so though if you are to have a positive Sprint. Sadly, whilst our long run pace looked competitive in FP1, we clearly had work to do on the single lap. We made some adjustments ahead of Sprint Qualifying but we were never in the fight for the top three unfortunately.
“Kimi, on his first visit to COTA, put in a good lap in SQ1 but a few lock-ups in SQ2 cost him. He was only a few thousandths short of getting through but fell just the wrong side of the cut-off. George progressed to SQ3 but didn’t enjoy the cleanest of laps on the Soft tyre, losing a couple of tenths at turn one. Whilst that cost him, P4 was probably the maximum today given our pace.
“Starting P5 and P11, it is unlikely that we will score major points tomorrow morning. We will still give it our all but the main priority will be to gather data and learnings so we can improve the car for qualifying in the afternoon.”
