George Russell believes the smooth track surface had a major role in allowing Mercedes to dominate as he comfortably won the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Mercedes has endured an inconsistent year, going on a run of three wins in four races mid-season but following that with a return of just one podium in the seven rounds leading into Las Vegas. Russell qualified on pole position and took victory ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton — who climbed from 10th to finish second — and he says the team has identified what worked for it this weekend.
“It’s no secret that we struggle on the bumpy circuits and we have to lift the car quite a lot,” Russell said. “We’ve got to make it much softer. And then we’re in a downforce window where we don’t have any. It’s not that we just suddenly forget how to set the car up. It’s just certain circuits require us to put the car in a window it doesn’t like to be.
“On tracks like this where it’s relatively smooth, we can get the car quite low, quite stiff, with little or no bumps around the track, we fly.”
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Russell held off Charles Leclerc in the opening laps before pulling a significant gap over the field, and while Hamilton closed in for a spell in the late stages, the race winner says he was managing his pace in case of any curveballs that might come his way.
“I was just waiting for something to happen,” he said. “The two races I’ve been on pole before, it’s always been chaos, rain, dry and always something happening, the last race in Brazil with the red flag…
So, I was like, ‘I feel confident here, I’ve got a good gap but I’m just waiting for something to happen,’ and it didn’t. So I guess luck has turned and I’m just so happy right now.
“It’s been a real surprise seeing how strong our pace has been and securing the pole yesterday I was so pleased with. Then I think we won the race in stint one.
“To be honest, stint one was exceptional. I knew from there on in the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tires and opened them up. So it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.”