Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggle to understand why optimal performance has eluded Mercedes during the Italian GP, as the order appears unpredictable.
Hamilton topped both the second and third free practice sessions at Monza, as well as Q2, but he and Russell finished sixth and third in qualifying, respectively, only to finish fifth and seventh in the race.
Hamilton was 22.8 seconds clear of race winner Charles Leclerc, but said the Mercedes was suffering “more degradation” as well as “generally one or two tenths off” per lap in race conditions.
Asked about the balance of the W15, the seven-time world champion added: “It was OK, nothing special. Either you have graining on the left front or the left back. We just didn’t have the pace. We have to go and look and try to figure out why.”
“Also, because we looked better on Friday, we were slower last weekend, or others got faster, or we were too light and they were too heavy, who knows?”
Russell’s relatively poor performance was largely the result of a mistake in the first turn of the first lap, which sent him off the track and immediately dropped him to seventh. Losing “a huge amount of performance” due to front wing damage after the incident, he also had to make an earlier than planned pit stop.
The incident was very damaging to his chances of winning or even placing on the podium – but it would still be a difficult task, according to the Mercedes driver.
“I was just caught in the braking zone of Oscar [Piastri] and I touched the brakes, started to lock up because I was so close to him and had to take evasive action,” Russell said.
“It’s quite unnerving when your whole weekend goes by so quickly, but looking at the pace after that, I don’t think we could keep up with McLaren and Ferrari.”
“It was a really disappointing day but in the end I didn’t have the pace. The sport is a bit strange at the moment with Red Bull losing so much pace.”
“Ferrari seemed to struggle at Zandvoort and all the previous races, but then they were fast on Sunday at Zandvoort and all this weekend, so I really don’t know.”
Meanwhile, Hamilton hopes that the upcoming upgrades, albeit minor, will help the team fight against the other top teams after all six McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes cars qualified within two-tenths of each other at Monza.
“There’s definitely some performance to come over the next few races,” he insists. “We have small parts. I don’t know if something big awaits us, but I hope we will have more performances.”
Double winner in the last five races, Hamilton expects to have another chance to fight for victory at some stage, explaining: “Hopefully if we improve a bit there will be some tracks that will be a bit better than us [at Monza] .”
