Russell: Wind made it hard to understand Mercedes’ upgrades

Mercedes have brought a new front wing to Silverstone in their ongoing development push to close the gap to runaway leaders Red Bull, who have won all nine races so far this season. 

But the Silver Arrows endured a difficult Friday, with Russell and Lewis Hamilton finishing down in 12th and 15th in second practice. 

Asked if it was too early to learn about the upgrades, Russell replied: “Well it's so windy out there for all the drivers, everybody is speaking about it. really challenging conditions. 

“Not a lot to take away from the upgrades as such but come qualifying I'm sure we'll know where we stand.” 

Mercedes’ drivers finished outside the top 10 in both practice sessions. 

“Definitely not our finest Friday,” Russell admitted. “Conditions will be different tomorrow. 

“We need to try and get to the bottom of it because the pace in FP1 was looking reasonably good on the medium tyre, we thought we'd be right up there if we took the softs but in FP2 we were nowhere. Need to try and understand that.”

The 25-year-old Briton suspects high track temperatures exacerbated Mercedes’ struggles. 

“We're seeing a small trend that when the temperatures are hotter we seem to take a bit of step backwards, we've got some ideas why that is,” he said.

“Five minutes since I jumped out of the car so need to dig into the data with the team and see what we can do tomorrow.”