Mercedes 'not in perfect window' after scrappy FP2 - Russell

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George Russell might have finished in P2 in Thursday's second practice session, but the Mercedes driver was aware that not all was well with the W15 heading into this weekend's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The team has still not managed to address the overheating issue that caused them problems last week in Bahrain, and this week Russell felt that the car was showing some worryingly familiar signs of handling and set-up issues.

Speaking over the team radio in the early part of the session, Russell lamented a lack of stability through Jeddah Corniche Circuit's high-speed corners.

“[The] car is so so unstable high speed, so so unstable high speed,” he was heard to comment at one stage.

"We didn't have the car in the perfect window and FP2 was a little bit of a scrappy session" he reported later. "It's still very early days; it's only the second race of the season and the second circuit we've ran at in anger.

Read also: Alonso finishes on top in second practice

But Russell was happier with other aspects ohe car's performance. "t was fun to be back on the track here in Jeddah. It's a really high-speed circuit so that's enjoyable

"The times looked good on the single lap, and we're not too sure yet where we're at on the long runs.

"We did a lot of testing in FP1 with different set-ups across the cars. We then made some changes for FP2 to try and learn more about the W15.

"We need to keep on building on our learnings and everyone will be hard at work overnight to eke out more performance. It's so close once again so let's see what we can do tomorrow."

Russell's team mate Lewis Hamilton struggled on Thursday and was only eighth in both FP1 and FP2, admitting that he didn't have sufficient confidence in the car today.

"We've covered quite a range of set-ups over the course of the day," commented Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. Ultimately, it doesn't feel like we've ended up with either car in the best place.

"The single lap was messy and compromised by traffic. A cleaner session would have helped but we're also lacking a bit of grip in the high-speed. We will be looking overnight at solutions to that.

Our long runs weren't very long either, which wasn't ideal. From the limited date, we have reasonable pace but neither driver was happy with the overall balance.

"The summary therefore is that we've got lap-time to find overnight,' Shovlin concluded. "The positive is that we have plenty of areas to go looking for it.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.