George Russell: McLaren and Ferrari’s Miami Upgrades “Pretty Surprising” as Mercedes Falls Back
Five weeks of testing, simulator work, and aero packages quietly being signed off in Brackley, Woking, and Maranello, and the first results on who actually used the break well comes in a 12-minute Sprint Qualifying session in Florida heat. Mercedes did not love what it saw. George Russell rolled out of the cockpit at the Miami International Autodrome on Friday with a sixth-place qualifying result for Saturday’s Sprint.
It’s fair to say his rivals that finished in front of him got faster than he expected over the April break. Norris took sprint pole, with Kimim Antonelli, Oscar Piastri , Charles Leclerc , and Max Verstappen filling out the top five ahead of Russell in sixth, and Lewis Hamilton seventh. Two McLarens, two Ferraris, and an Antonelli-led Mercedes effort that left the senior driver in the team eight-tenths off and looking for answers.
What Russell Actually Said About the Gap “Pretty surprising how big a jump McLaren and Ferrari made. That’s pretty damn impressive,” he said. “We knew they had probably closed the gap but all day they were quicker than us.
” Ten of the eleven teams brought upgrades to Miami, and McLaren in particular looked to have extracted real performance from its package, with Red Bull also benefitting. Mercedes, by contrast, looked a step behind the form it carried into the break. Antonelli and Russell were only fifth and sixth in SQ1, and the takeaway was that the Silver Arrows were nowhere near as comfortable as they had been pre-break.
Russell’s diagnosis from inside the car points at the same limitations that Miami always produces. “Just overheating the tyres a lot. In that twisty section in the middle, I struggled to get the right balance with the car,” he said.