Russell: 'Something to learn' from overnight gains in Baku

George Russell enjoyed a significant rise in performance from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning in Baku, but the Briton was puzzled by the overnight improvement of his virtually unchanged Mercedes.

On Friday, Russell was the odd man out in qualifying, the Briton failing to make the Q3 cut, a shortfall he justified by his car's lack of pace but also by a slight mistake.

On Saturday, Russell cruised through the successive segments of the Sprint Shootout with little trouble, the Mercedes charger concluding SQ3 a solid fourth in the pecking order, ahead of both his teammate Lewis Hamilton and of Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.

"Firstly very happy with the job in qualifying, I think P4 is exceeding our expectations," he said after the hectic session.

"But when I got back into the pitlane I was like ‘bugger’, I still made that mistake yesterday and showed what was probably possible, but you can’t always be on your A-game, and it was so close yesterday."

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As he pondered the reasons behind his W14's sudden upswing in form, Russell suggested that it was something that Mercedes must investigate and learn from.

"It’s an interesting one, we always seem to get better as qualifying progresses, we always sort of come into our own come Q3 and as the weekend progresses, so there’s something to learn there," he said while making clear that such a state of affairs was not deliberate on the part of Mercedes.

"We don’t purposely make the car in that way that it keeps seemingly getting better," he added.

"We’ve got some ideas why that may be, but I’m pleased that we sort of turned it around today, or probably I improved my driving because obviously, the car stayed the same as yesterday.

"So we’ll just go out and try and maximise the weekend."

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