Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
Lewis Hamilton finished P5 and George Russell P7 in the 2024 Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix. George lined up P3 and Lewis P6 on the Medium tyre at the start.
A frantic opening lap saw George pick up front-wing damage, with Lewis also having contact, although not suffering any ill effects. That left Lewis running P5 and P7 at the end of the opening lap. From there, the focus was on understanding how to manage the tyres without suffering from graining. After boxing to the Hard compound, George took a new front wing, and both drivers evaluated the one-stop.
Ultimately, both switched to the two-stop after suffering from the aforementioned graining. Despite pushing hard, neither driver could improve their position and came home P5 and P7. That completes the first double-header of the second half of the season. In two weeks, the team’s attention now turns towards the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.
George Russell
It was a frustrating day today. Ultimately, we didn’t have the pace to fight for the podium, but my race came undone at the first corner. It is disappointing when that happens after all the efforts the team put in over the weekend. I made a good start but got caught in the dirty air behind Piastri. I locked up to avoid him and picked up some front-wing damage. That compromised my opening stint, and we lost time in the pit stop, having to change the wing itself.
Our pace hasn’t been as strong as before the summer break here or in Zandvoort. As a team, we will go away, put the effort in, and find out why that is. Other teams seem to have taken a step forward, so we must work diligently to get back to terms with them.
Lewis Hamilton
We didn’t have the pace today to fight for more. The McLarens and the Ferrari, in particular, were strong. I managed to keep up with Sainz but couldn’t do the longer stint and one-stop he could. If we had started ahead of him, we might have been able to hold him off. Ultimately, we needed a better balance with the car today to achieve much more.
It’s a shame to come away from a weekend where we looked so strong without more to show. We looked good throughout practice and qualifying but couldn’t match that today. The field is so tight now, and seeing what happens over the coming races will be fascinating. We will keep working hard and hopefully have a stronger Baku race in two weeks.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO
Congratulations to Ferrari and Charles Leclerc on a well-deserved victory today. It is always a special moment when the scarlet red car wins here at Monza. Our own race was better than Zandvoort but still not good. We completed the two-stop strategy as we suffered from graining on the front left tyre, which made the one-stop unlikely. It was a difficult challenge to manage and hard to know whether to commit to the one-stop or push harder and go to the two-stop. Our pace today made it difficult to score much more than we did on either path, though.
We have not performed at the level we did before the summer shutdown in the last two races. When you don’t have the pace, strategy decisions are difficult, as we see today. We have time to analyse why that is now before Baku and aim to return stronger.
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