26 October 2023 , 21:45
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George Russell expects a "more conservative" Mexican Grand Prix from his Mercedes team after Lewis Hamilton's Austin disqualification.
Having finished second on the road, Hamilton was set to leave Texas with a strong points haul. But he was later stripped of that podium finish after post-race checks on his car found too much wear on the underside of his car.
The plank had taken too much punishment on the bumpy Circuit of the Americas track which meant the car was, at the end, in breach of F1 rules. Team-mate Russell was quizzed about it for the first time as he spoke to reporters on Thursday ahead of this weekend's Mexico City race.
He pointed to the fact that teams had just one practice session in Austin to commit to their car set-ups for the weekend as the reason behind the error. "I think it's very different to, obviously, the one session in Austin," he replied when asked if his team will be conservative in terms of the ride heights of its cars this weekend.
"We did all of the standard checks after FP1 and the plank looked absolutely fine. So there was no reason after the practice session to make any changes, but obviously, we got that very wrong. I expect the nature of this circuit to be naturally more conservative and, with the three practice sessions, I don't foresee any any issues."
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Hamilton's disqualifications took the gloss off the weekend for Mercedes, who brought new parts for their cars which Russell believes had a positive impact. "Definitely, the upgrades were performing really well and I think that was clear with the performance," he added.
"We had some limitations on my side, I had not enough fuel and was having to manage the fuel for half the race. So that really put me on the back foot. But the last stint, we just sort of went through it and the pace was probably the strongest strongest out there, which definitely bodes well for the end of the season."
Mercedes will hope to make the most of those improvements in Mexico this weekend, where the team believes it can perform well. And the Silver Arrows are desperate to do so to get rid of the sour taste left by the way their weekend ended in Texas.
"It's a miserable feeling. It hurts and everybody here feels it," said technical director James Allison. "Everybody is upset, embarrassed to a degree as well because we absolutely don't like like being on the wrong side of the rules and just lamenting the lost points.
"Give it it a day or two and that will start to wane and be replaced by the much happier feeling which is we moved our car forward [in Austin] and that's hard to do. But we did it and we did it by a decent amount... As long as we can keep the car cool there in the thin air of the Mexico track then I think we will be pretty decent. The corners suit us, and the pace of the car should be good."