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Though George Russell was under no illusions that he’d be a pole position contender on his debut as a full-time Mercedes Formula 1 driver at the Bahrain Grand Prix, his eventual ninth on the grid was a huge letdown.
He had been quicker than seven-time world champion team-mate Lewis Hamilton in all three practice sessions (going fourth fastest each time) and in Q1, albeit with the caveat that they were on different programmes most of the time as Mercedes worked to find solutions to the issues keeping it off Ferrari and Red Bull’s pace.
But when it counted in Q3, Russell was one second and four places behind Hamilton, and nearly 1.7s off polesitter Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.
Mercedes ran used tyres for its first Q3 runs, and Russell admitted he burned through his fresh set too soon on his last run.
“In Q2 I was pretty happy to be honest, the car felt good, I was happy with the [tyre] warm-up,” Russell told Sky.
“And I just tried something different. We only had one set of tyres and I really pushed on my out-lap and at Turn 1 I just had no grip.
“I went one second slower than I did in Q2 and I was expecting to go a couple of tenths faster.
“It was a real shame. I’m glad I tried something. But it’s easy in retrospect.
“We’re not where we want to be, obviously P9 is much lower than where the car is.
“But we’re doing everything we can to get the car to the front and fighting the Ferraris and the Red Bulls.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff felt Russell should be absolved of blame for that qualifying strategy.
“It was probably us misguiding him in his last outing because we advised him to push on the out-lap even stronger and he probably had no edge anymore to the new tyre,” said Wolff.
Russell said Mercedes’ current plight was such it was a long way from doing usual race weekend detail work.
“I feel like we’re going one step forward, two steps back,” he admitted.
“We feel like we’re making progress and then suddenly we’re back into the same issues as we faced.
“It’s difficult because we’re so focused on solving the overarching issue of the car that it’s difficult to nail down on the details and finetune the thing.
“This is what it’s about at the moment. We want to be fighting for victory and we need to be trying everything we can to get to that.”
Hamilton was more upbeat about his qualifying result, feeling fifth was a reasonable outcome given the car has been “a bit of a nightmare to drive” so far and that Red Bull and Ferrari are “in another league”.
