On the day of the triumph of Lando Norris and McLaren, the Mercedes once again collects little encouraging signs from a W15 which saw the debut of the new package of updates. The positive note is represented by Lewis Hamilton who finished in sixth position after struggling for a long time with Sergio Perez, while George Russell finished eighth, with the introduction of the Safety Car which certainly did not help for the final result in the GP Miami .
Hamilton: “The best race this year”
Starting on the Hard tire instead of the Medium chosen by a large part of the starting grid, the seven-time world champion was the protagonist of some heated battles behind the leaders. At the end of the race, after recovering the position lost to Yuki Tsunoda following the entry of the Safety Car, Lewis Hamilton he was in the DRS zone behind Perez’s Red Bull for many laps, but was unable to attack the Mexican: “In my race today I had some fun battles. I gave everything I could to make progress and I made a couple of good overtakings. We were ultimately challenging Red Bull, so to be able to race them was fantastic. I didn’t have the pace of the guys in front, but I managed to keep up thanks to the DRS. When I lost it, they started to move away towards the end, but still following them at close range was a really good feeling“.
2024 Miami Grand Prix, Sunday – LAT Images
The result in Miami encourages Hamilton, despite Mercedes currently being clearly the fourth force in the championship: “Today was probably the best race I’ve had this year, so we just have to keep pushing. We have more small updates coming for Imola. Others are also developing their cars, but we will continue to work hard“.
Russell: “I struggled a lot in the final”
The GP Miami of George Russell it was more anonymous, with a difficult start in which the Briton lost some positions and a finish spent in vain chasing Yuki Tsunoda’s Racing Bulls: “My race today was difficult. I lost a few positions at the start and then, in the final stint, I had no pace with the Hard tyre and I struggled a lot. We will evaluate why this happened. Our lack of speed was completely unexpected, while Lewis had a strong race, so the car had some speed.”.
Mercedes: “The W15 didn’t perform well on this track”
In Miami, the Mercedes W15 showed a lack of speed on the straight which was once again compounded by problems in the slower corners, particularly with the Hard tyres. In short, not encouraging signs for the new package of updates that debuted in Florida. The Director of Mercedes Track Engineers, Andrew Shovlinconfirmed the difficulties: “We knew it would be difficult to recover positions. The car did not perform well on this track and we struggled especially in the slower corners. Lewis had a difficult stint on the Hard compound, but after the restart he was much happier on the Medium compound. Unfortunately we didn’t have the straight line speed to overtake Perez, but it was nice to be able to challenge him. It was a frustrating afternoon for George. He had problems sliding and struggling to find grip with the tyres“.
However, Mercedes is still working on the W15 to try to bring innovations that will allow us to get back on top: “Our goal is obviously to make the car faster – added Shovlin – We have some good developments in the pipeline and we will push hard to get them on the car as soon as possible“.
