While Formula 1 is technically a team sport, the first battle every driver on the grid has to win is against their teammate.
All 10 manufacturers have different cars meaning that the only way you can judge exactly how fast a driver is on track is by comparing them to their teammate.
Even that’s not always entirely accurate, with Lando Norris winning the Miami Grand Prix in a McLaren that had significantly more upgrades than Oscar Piastri’s.
The Australian should have the same car as his teammate in Imola and that makes McLaren a sudden threat to Red Bull’s dominance.
However, speaking on Sky Sports F1 after the race, there was another driver who had the same as his teammate but simply couldn’t achieve the same level of performance.
It was another tough weekend for Mercedes in Miami and George Russell has admitted that he was ‘nowhere’ near Lewis Hamilton during the Grand Prix.
Both drivers missed out on scoring points in the Sprint Race although they secured top ten finishes in Sunday’s Grand Prix.
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George Russell admits being ‘nowhere’ near Lewis Hamilton during Miami Grand Prix
Lewis Hamilton had a particularly eventful Sprint Race in Miami, battling with Kevin Magnussen and Yuki Tsunoda before missing out on a point due to a penalty picked up for speeding in the pit lane, while he also played his part in Lando Norris’s DNF.
However, Mercedes made life difficult for themselves after both cars missed out on SQ3.
Russell and Hamilton lined up alongside each other on the 4 row of the grid for the Miami Grand Prix but were nowhere near the pace of the Red Bulls and Ferraris at the front of the grid.
The one-time race winner struggled to get anything out of the car and dropped a place by the time he reached the chequered flag despite Oscar Piastri falling out of the points ahead of him.
He was overtaken by Hamilton who looked very quick and more worryingly, Yuki Tsunoda finished ahead of him in the RB.
David Coulthard said that Hamilton looked ‘all at sea’ at times during the race, but his £275,000-a-week teammate had plenty more issues to deal with.
He’ll be hoping that Mercedes can resolve some of these issues before they head to Imola in two weeks but given they’ve been dealing with the same problems for years, that appears to be unlikely.
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Reviewing his performance, Russell said: “It was a really, really tough day for us, we had no pace whatsoever.
“We need to check the car because something didn’t feel quite right and we lost a lot of pace compared to what we thought.
“I don’t think it caught us off guard that we had no pace at all, but it was a lot worse than expected.
“Our race pace has been pretty strong this year but compared to Lewis [Hamilton] I was nowhere so need to check and see what happened and go from there.”
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Although Russell was nowhere near Hamilton’s pace in Miami, those roles have been reversed for much of this season.
Russell leads Hamilton by 10 points in the Drivers’ Championship and his 8 place finish in Miami was his worst result aside from his crash in Australia.
In stark contrast, Hamilton’s 6 place finish was his best performance and the 39-year-old will hope that’s a sign that his fortunes are beginning to change after a really difficult start to the campaign.
The post ‘Really tough day’: £275k-a-week driver admits he was ‘nowhere’ compared to his teammate after Miami GP appeared first on F1 Oversteer.