Why Mercedes’ huge Baku practice advantage may not be the real picture

Mercedes made a very strong statement during Thursday’s practice sessions at the Baku City Circuit. George Russell topped the times in both sessions, with the first non-Mercedes car almost a second adrift at the end of the day (Max Verstappen at 0.827s).
Mercedes will introduce its long-awaited upgrade package for the W17 in Malaysia, but even without new parts on the car, rivals have been highly impressed by Russell’s pace.

Red Bull can count on the final major upgrade package for the RB22 this week, but technical director Pierre Waché admits he had not expected such a large deficit to the Mercedes works team.

“Yes, I didn’t expect this big gap, mainly on the straights. Afterwards we have to analyse if it’s coming from a tow [or something else]. But yes, we have work to do to achieve what they have achieved”, Waché said when asked about the gap by Motorsport.com.

“I hope that it’s closer, but it looks like they are a lot quicker than us. We will see what we can do to make the car quicker, but if this is the real delta, then it will be tough for us.”
Isack Hadjar, who felt completely fine physically on his return behind the wheel, fears that Mercedes will genuinely be out of Red Bull’s reach on Friday and Saturday.

“A bit, [and thinking] why they are so far away. I think that’s very impressive. I think we have a good car, we’ve been in the mix with McLaren and Ferrari, but yeah, Mercedes, they are out of touch.”

Mercedes itself, however, is not yet fully convinced that it is a class above everyone else. Deputy team principal Bradley Lord, who is taking charge this weekend in Toto Wolff’s absence, stresses that his team absolutely should not celebrate too soon.
“I don’t think it’s a representative gap, honestly. We ran more timed laps on the soft tyre in FP2. Max only had one go, so did the McLarens.

“Probably don’t read too much into it, because every timed lap you did, the lap times were improving. We did one more than everyone else, and therefore probably found a bit more in the track and a bit more in the tyre than they were able to.”

That said, Russell did look commanding throughout the entire day of practice. The Briton concluded in Madrid that he is no longer in the title fight and can only fight for race wins, but the start of the Baku race weekend has proved very promising.

“George was pretty sick here last year and still finished P2. So it’s a circuit… I mean, he goes well at every circuit, but this is one where traditionally he’s had some really strong results”, Lord said.

“And that’s what you’re looking for as a team, that if one car hits trouble, the other one’s right up there and leading the way. He’s done that today and hopefully can continue doing that through the rest of the weekend.”

When Lord mentions that “one car hits trouble”, those words logically refer to Kimi Antonelli. The championship leader suffered a hydraulic problem during the first practice session, costing him track time – a factor that is even more important than usual on a street circuit.

Fan of George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Michael Potts / LAT images via Getty Images

“Obviously it’s put him behind the curve a little bit, so he’s just missing laps and missing time out on track, but equally, it was a mega job from the mechanics”, Lord continued. “The car came back, I think, 15 minutes after practice, and it was ready to go just as the red flag came out in FP2. So they did an epic job to swap the engine, get the old one out and the new one in.

“No penalty, because it’s one that’s already in the pool, and yeah, we were ready to go. So we’ve at least salvaged as much of the session as we could.”

The end result is two Mercedes cars at the top with a large gap to the rest. That has impressed the competition, although Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur played down the significance of Thursday’s times: “I’m getting too old to pay too much attention to Friday!”

When it is pointed out that it is actually still Thursday, Vasseur concludes with a laugh: “Friday is useless, imagine the Thursday!”

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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