The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team was very pleased with their performance at the Canadian Grand Prix, as Lewis Hamilton obtained his second podium of the season in third position and George Russell was not far behind him in fourth position.
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin said, “It’s a good result for the team to come away with another third and fourth place and encouraging that the underlying pace looked a better than in Baku. Both drivers had a good race.
“Lewis had a very solid drive to the podium; we didn’t quite have the pace of Max or Carlos but most of the time, it felt that we were just missing two or three-tenths which will spur us all on to work to close that gap.
“George also surprised us with his ability to pick cars off in the first stint. We’d opted for a big wing on his car going into qualifying to see what we could do in the wet conditions yesterday but expected it to be a liability in the race. However, he was able to use it to attack into the corners and made good progress through the field back to fourth.
“It’s really hard to know what to expect coming to each track with this car but we certainly maximised the opportunity today and we’ve learnt a bit more about the car. The team in Brackley and Brixworth will continue to push hard, there’s lots to improve on the car but that can be translated into potential and the race today has given us more encouragement to keep pushing to close that gap“.
“We can be quietly satisfied” – Toto Wolff
Lewis Hamilton’s fastest lap took him 1:16.167 and George Russel was shortly behind that with 1:16.418. They used the same strategy, starting with Medium tyres then continuing on Hard tyres for the rest of the race. Hamilton had his first set of tyres changed during his pitstop on lap nine, after the Virtual Safety Car was implemented, taking advantage of the lessened time penalty. He then pitted again at lap forty-four for his second set of Hard tyres.
Similarly, Russell took advantage of the other Virtual Safety Car and pitted during the nineteenth lap. Then, again, one lap after Hamilton. The final safety car was a real safety car, making the group bunch together. This made it easier for the Mercedes pair to catch up with the leading pack. However, it also helped the cars that were further back to gain on them, making the final 15 laps very tense.
The team principal and CEO of Mercedes, Toto Wolff said, “Montreal has always been a happy place for Lewis and today he was really good, with a car that was a handful, so we can be quietly satisfied. The race pace was good, particularly when the tyres started to degrade – Max and Carlos actually came towards us and that was nice to see.
After a bold gamble yesterday which left him further down the grid, George made smart overtakes at the start and then showed good pace to bring the result home behind Lewis. The past two weekends have showed the collective spirit of the team to extract a solid haul of points, even if we lack the pace to be challenging the guys at the front.”
