George Russell left disappointed from the Sprint qualifying held this Friday (1) for the Miami GP of Formula 1. The driver spoke about hard work to understand performance, but acknowledged that he expected the rival teams to close the gap.
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The Brit had a session far from ideal at the Hard Rock Stadium street circuit. While Kimi Antonelli starts from second place, the championship runner-up lines up only in sixth place, alongside Max Verstappen.
So, evaluating the qualifying and the day overall, George acknowledged that it was not as expected, despite expecting the rivals to get closer with the update packages for Miami.
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“Although today’s qualifying was the Sprint and therefore not the most important session of the weekend, we are disappointed with our performance on Friday. The tires overheated in the intermediate sector and we had difficulties finding the right balance with the car. We need to work hard overnight to understand why. The most important part of the weekend is still to come, but we need to improve if we want to fight for the top positions,” he pointed out.
“We knew our rivals would close the gap with their updates, but it was surprising and impressive to see the leap that McLaren and Ferrari made. I don’t expect the Sprint to offer us many opportunities and we are not starting in a very good position; we will see what tomorrow holds and, hopefully, we can achieve a better performance in Saturday afternoon’s qualifying,” he added.
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