Russell admits 'it wasn’t our finest Friday' with engine issue

Mercedes driver George Russell admitted that he had been on the back foot and struggling during Friday's practice in Baku after suffering an engine issue between sessions.

Russell completed 18 laps and was only eighth fastest in FP1, but then missed the first half of second practice while the team made an engine change, limiting him to 16 laps where he finished the day in P9.

It wasn't the performance that he was looking for, especially as team mate Lewis Hamilton was in the top three in both sessions and completed a total of 41 laps in what was a relatively trouble-free day.

“It wasn’t our finest Friday, that is for sure. Not the smoothest Friday we've ever had," he acknowledged after the end of the session.

"Unfortunately, we lost a little bit of running time with a precautionary power unit change ahead of FP2," he explained. "We had a problem after FP1 which obviously delayed the start.

• Read also: Leclerc overcomes early gremlins to top FP2

“The problem was the engine in FP1, then at the end it was actually a sensor failure, so we pitted because we thought we had a water leak but we didn’t.”

Even before the problems, Russell admitted that "it wasn’t feeling superb for me out there."

"I was really struggling with confidence in the car and getting my tyres in the right window," he explained. "I need to try and step up my game a little bit for tomorrow and try and close the gap.

"I was definitely off the pace compared to Lewis," he added. "Lewis is looking quick out there so we know the car is capable of something strong, but once again Ferrari look really, really strong. They always seem to be fast in Baku."

Not that he's giving up: "If we can make improvements overnight though, we can aim to be in the mix for qualifying and the race on Sunday."

"George had a more challenging day," agreed Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin . "He wasn't very happy with the balance of the car in FP1, so we spent that session trying to improve it.

"Shortly after FP1 finished, we spotted an issue with the power unit that led us to take the cautious approach of swapping it out for FP2. That unfortunately cost him 25 minutes of valuable track time.

"Whilst we got to run both tyres, the programme was compromise," he confirmed. "We'll be aiming to recover some of the lost ground with George tomorrow in FP3."

In contrast, Hamilton was feeling very much happier with how things had turned out on his side of the Mercedes garage, finishing the day 0.066s off the pace of Charles Leclerc at the end of FP2.

“It was a really good day. I enjoyed today, I hit the ground running from the get-go and made incremental steps with the set-up," he said. "For once felt like we didn’t have steps that we had to come back on, it was consistently building.

“I don’t know how my long run is compared to others but we didn’t get a huge amount of laps," he said. "Red Bull seem pretty quick, as does the Ferrari, but we are there or thereabouts.

"Yu don’t know what fuel loads everyone is on," he admitted. "Often when we get to P3 [ion Friday], when we get to qualifying everyone takes a step and we we haven’t always.

“I think we will stay cautious and just try to do the best we can with what we have," he concluded. "I hope we're closer to the front than it seems, maybe. But we will find out tomorrow.”

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