18/05/2024
NEWS STORY
George Russell qualified P6 with Lewis Hamilton P8 for Sunday's Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. After a solid Friday, the team focused on single lap work during a twice interrupted FP3.
In Q1, both drivers made it through by virtue of their second efforts. They both took to the track for a third effort but were able to abandon early; this did leave them with one less set of new Soft tyres for Q3.
Q2 was a more closely fought affair and both drivers used improvements on their final efforts to progress through to the final part of Qualifying.
After an initial run on used Soft tyres, George and Lewis utilised new rubber to take P6 and P8 as the flag fell. George was agonisingly close to taking P5, falling one millisecond shy of Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari.
George Russell: I was very happy with my final effort in Q3. It was a really strong lap and overall, it was a good session from my point of view. It is obviously annoying when you are one millisecond behind one of your competitors, but I think that was the maximum we had today. I think P6 is therefore a fair result. It is very difficult to pass here so unfortunately, I'm not forecasting lots of overtakes tomorrow. I hope to be proven wrong though and we can gain some positions.
The car is feeling much better than it has done in recent races. Of course it is all about lap times, so we just need to keep working away and improving. We've seen how others have progressed and that gives us encouragement.
Lewis Hamilton: The car felt really good on Friday but today, I was struggling to find that same level of grip. It was frustrating and I think the small changes we made going into Qualifying had quite a big impact. George did a great job though and for him to be only four tenths off pole is clearly a good step forward for us. Unfortunately I was just lacking some pace so couldn't quite match that.
Tomorrow we are likely looking at trying to make up a few positions. We will do some work tonight to see if we can improve anything but it's very hard to overtake here so, unless something out of the ordinary happens, we will only be able to make small gains.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO: When you look at the gap to the front, and our closest competitors around us, you can see progress. P6 and P8 are not the positions we want to be. We've been saying that for a while, but we can see the advantage others have closing. It takes time to do that, so we must be patient and that's the reality at the moment.
We know we have developments in the pipeline that will improve the balance of the car. Even though our positions today are not good enough, we are pointing in the right direction. Tomorrow, we will be focused on maximising the package we currently have and aiming to score some decent points.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: We've worked hard to try and close the gap to the front over the last few races. Encouragingly, there are signs we're making progress, but we know we've still got a long way to go. Neither driver had two new sets of the Soft tyre left by Q3. This may have cost each a place on tomorrow's grid when you look at how close the gaps are to the cars ahead. Ultimately though, P6 and P8 are about where our current pace is. It is encouraging that the car's balance around the lap has been improved this weekend.
We will now have to wait and see where the pace falls out in the race tomorrow. There did look to be some tyre degradation on Friday, so that should help create some opportunity. It is difficult to overtake here at Imola though so it will likely take some good fortune for us to be challenging for the podium spots.
Check out our Saturday gallery from Imola here.