George Russell brushed off his fourth consecutive head-to-head qualifying loss to Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli this season, saying it was no surprise to see the 19-year-old hold an advantage over one lap in Miami.
Russell last outqualified Antonelli during sprint qualifying at the Chinese Grand Prix in March, with the Italian taking pole position at the last three grands prix as well as second on the grid for Saturday’s sprint race in Miami.
Russell, who is seven points behind Antonelli in the drivers’ standings, could only manage fifth on the grid for Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix, with a lap time that was 0.624 seconds off his teammate.
Although Russell admitted to making a mistake on his final lap in Q3, he said he always felt Antonelli would hold the edge in qualifying in Miami.
“Well, I just made a mistake on my last corner, last lap, I was about 0.3 seconds up,” Russell said. “I’m a little bit annoyed, but this is a track I’ve always struggled with. You know, Kimi was pole last year, I was P5, and today he’s pole and I’m P5.
“And it’s just very low grip here, you know, it’s sliding around a lot. The tarmac is hot, similar to Brazil, you know. I think Kimi, again, was more competitive than me there.
“Whereas I’m much more comfortable with the high grip conditions, where the tyre and the car is more connected to the ground.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff described Antonelli’s pole position lap as “spectacular,” but agreed with Russell’s assessment that the track suited the Italian driver more.
“George said to me there are drivers that struggle on certain tracks, and here the asphalt is very smooth,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “It’s almost like a [tennis] player who is good on clay and another who is better on a hard surface.
“But through qualifying he made it up in the times and it was just a smidge missing to P3, so I’m really happy to also see his development through qualifying on a track that he is not 100% comfortable on.”
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Antonelli’s pole position on Saturday represented a turnaround from Friday’s sprint qualifying in which McLaren’s Lando Norris beat the Mercedes driver to pole position by 0.222 seconds.
Wolff said Mercedes’ engineers compared its Friday data with engine customer McLaren’s and spotted that its cars were not deploying the same amount of electric energy early in the lap.
“The team made a mistake, all of us” Wolff said. “We were scratching our head because we didn’t compare [in performance] to our engine customers.
“Into Turn 4 we lost three tenths of a second and it was a deployment issue that we fixed for today and that put us back on par with all the others.”
