![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/mercedes-call-out-lewis-hamilton-mistake-as-george-russell-shows-f1-rival-how-its-done/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/0_Lewis-Hamilton-George-Russell-main-AP.jpg&description=Ten places separated Mercedes drivers Russell and Hamilton at Zandvoort, with the younger Brit getting the better of his more experienced team-mate on the short track Mercedes chief Mike Elliott has explained the mistake which ruined Lewis Hamilton's weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix. The seven-time world champion suffered a Q2 exit in qualifying, hampered in part by other drivers who impeded him. It condemned him to 13th on the grid, while team-mate Russell had a much better time of it. He managed to avoid traffic on the short Zandvoort circuit to not only reach the top 10, but then to go third quickest in Q3. In a newly-released video from Mercedes, the team's chief technical officer Elliott explained how there was such a chasm between their two drivers last Saturday. "This year has been a difficult year in terms of qualifying, with the conditions we've faced," he said. "We've had a lot of circuits where we've seen wet conditions and drying tracks and they always make for tricky qualifying. In this case in Q2 the track was drying, although we were still going to be on the intermediates. "We were only really going to get that very last run in Q2 on that new set of intermediates. If you look to George's running, he got his first lap and that was probably the quickest way to have got the time out in qualifying. "In Lewis' case, he was trying to position himself and that is always difficult at Zandvoort. Positioning yourself for that last lap, you must do that out of turn 12 because you are accelerating through 13 and 14 and onto the start/finish straight. "On this run, Lewis was close to [Logan] Sargeant. He managed to jump Sargeant but found himself starting the lap only one and a half seconds behind Norris. Because of that, he couldn't get the best out of the car and had to back off. "That meant he needed to go on his next lap and on that next lap he probably had already taken the best out of the tyres. He was probably starting to see an amount of overheating towards){kind=link}
Ten places separated Mercedes drivers Russell and Hamilton at Zandvoort, with the younger Brit getting the better of his more experienced team-mate on the short track
Mercedes chief Mike Elliott has explained the mistake which ruined Lewis Hamilton’s weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion suffered a Q2 exit in qualifying, hampered in part by other drivers who impeded him. It condemned him to 13th on the grid, while team-mate Russell had a much better time of it.
He managed to avoid traffic on the short Zandvoort circuit to not only reach the top 10, but then to go third quickest in Q3. In a newly-released video from Mercedes, the team’s chief technical officer Elliott explained how there was such a chasm between their two drivers last Saturday.
“This year has been a difficult year in terms of qualifying, with the conditions we’ve faced,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of circuits where we’ve seen wet conditions and drying tracks and they always make for tricky qualifying. In this case in Q2 the track was drying, although we were still going to be on the intermediates.