George Russell Rues Inability To “attack any of the corners” In Difficult Qualifying For 2022 Miami Grand Prix

Mercedes’ George Russell rues inability to “attack any of the corners” which left him 12th on the grid for 2022 Miami Grand Prix.

Having topped Friday Practice with reduced porpoising, Russell endured a nightmare FP3 as a mixture of poor timing in overcast conditions and heavier porpoising left him 17th fastest heading into Qualifying which led to what the Brit described as “pretty conservative” set-up changes.

Russell though was only able to battle to 12th on the grid and missed out on Q3 by just 0.045 seconds to compound a difficult day for the 24 year-old, in a surprise loss of performance compared to Friday Practice.

Reflecting on what exactly went wrong post-Qualifying, Russell said: “The car was bouncing a lot more today and I just couldn’t attack any of the corners as a result.

“It’s a shame because we showed good potential yesterday but it massively went away from us today.”

Specifying exactly where the porpoising bounce proved most problematic, Russell continued: “The bouncing was going through all the corners, particularly turns 4 and 5, and you just couldn’t attack into the braking zone.

“When you get the car in the window, it’s fast and yesterday we looked to be fighting for pole but today is our worst qualifying of the year so it’s difficult to make sense of.”

Lewis Hamilton meanwhile qualified outside of the top five in America for the first time after he was beaten to fifth by ex teammate and now Alfa Romeo driver, Valtteri Bottas.

Hamilton though felt that there was a hugely more important feeling to take from Qualifying as he commented: “Today was a much, much better qualifying session than I’ve had the last three races so I am grateful for that – I’ll take it.”

The seven-time champion has also vowed that Mercedes will “just keep on chipping away” at fixing the issues on the W13 car, yet bemused that their gap to Ferrari and Red Bull feels “similar” now to what it was at the start of the season in Bahrain.

Refusing to predict his race pace potential heading into the race, Hamilton added: “It’s difficult to say how we’ll be on race pace, the car has generally not felt strong this weekend for me but today, once I was able to get the tyres into a better place, it was a little more promising.”