2023 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix highlights

Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

Solid race ends in fourth and fifth for the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. After a well-executed one-stop race on offset tyre strategies, George Russell finished fourth, with Lewis Hamilton fifth.

With George lining up P3 and Lewis P7, the team split strategies, with George starting on the medium and Lewis on the hard tyre.

Both cars opted to stop under the Safety Car on lap 17, with George switching to the hard tyre and Lewis taking the medium.

George took the restart in fourth, with Lewis passing Carlos Sainz for fifth; both cars ran in these positions to the flag. Post-race, the Aston Martin of Alonso was given a 10-second time penalty, promoting George to third. However, this was subsequently reversed after a right to review from Aston Martin.

Lewis Hamilton

We got some great points as a Team today. George getting third is amazing, and I was able to move forward from seventh to fifth, which is the main thing. If I had qualified better, I might have gotten a better result, but we still got some points. My set-up this weekend has been the biggest issue I’ve faced. I got it wrong for Qualifying, and it wasn’t good in the race either, so I struggled today. We tried to go long on the hard tyre, but the Safety Car came out, so I had to pit. We just about managed to make the medium work, but it was a long second stint. We didn’t have the same tyre degradation as in Bahrain, though. We were much closer to some of those ahead, and it’s great to be in the top five, ahead of the Ferraris. There is a lot to work on, but there are positives to take away from this weekend.

George Russell

You feel satisfied when you put in the hard work, which pays dividends. We finished ahead of both Ferraris on merit today and know we’ve got a lot of performance to come soon. The gap to the Red Bulls is still considerable, but we’ll take the positives from the weekend, keep fighting as hard as we can and focus on ourselves. It was an interesting race. After the Safety Car, I was on the hard tyre after the Safety Car, and Lewis was behind on the medium. He had a bit more pace initially, but I knew my pace would come at the end. Fernando deserved to be on the podium today, and I was pleased with P4. I’m not complaining too much about taking home a trophy, though, and we will take the extra points!

Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO

Today was positive, and we’d rather take a small trophy home than none. I think we saw some performance gains in Bahrain, which is encouraging. It shows us that the development trajectory is going in the right direction. Our drivers under our guidance probably over-managed their tyres a bit, and we had a little more pace. Bahrain is still in our heads, and we could have pushed more. It was a strong driver from George and a great recovery from Lewis to get solid points. Red Bull is still far away in terms of performance, which won’t be easy to catch. Nevertheless, today we’ve seen our development heading how we want to head.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

The team and both drivers made a good effort today to collect some very useful points, and clearly a pleasing end to the weekend for George picking up third place. The car is hard work to get into the right window, and it’s not as easy for the drivers as it needs to be, but we’ve certainly found a better balance than in Bahrain, and it has been a lot kinder on its tyres. We’re under no illusion that we have a lot of work to do. We’ve been busy at the factory searching for performance, and the initial findings are encouraging, motivating us to keep working hard to improve. Today, we did exactly what we needed to do: maximise the potential in what we have. We’re looking forward to the next race in Melbourne; it’s closer in characteristics to Saudi than Bahrain, so hopefully, we’ll have a car that we can fight for a podium. We’ll ensure we get it on track if we can bring more performance.

Mercedes-AMG F1 Team best pictures:

2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Friday – LAT Images

2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Friday – LAT Images

2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prixx, Friday – LAT Images

2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Saturday – Jiri Krenek

2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Saturday – LAT Images

2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Sunday – LAT Images

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