(Motorsports news) Hamilton and Russell began fifth and eighth, respectively, and moved up to third and sixth on the restart following a red light for a start crash. While they kept up appearances in the early laps, they quickly encountered the same tyre degradation issues that plagued them in Saturday’s sprint, forcing them to come in earlier than everyone else after a first stint on softs.
Along with slowing their pace, the early stop caused them to make the next two stints longer than the W14 could handle, dropping them to the bottom of the top 10. Hamilton finished seventh after being passed and distanced by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, while Russell stopped with 12 laps remaining due to an overheating engine, putting him out of contention.
Wolff appeared stunned by his team’s performance at Interlagos with the identical W14 car that had taken podiums in previous weeks. “Inexcusable performance,” Wolff said, according to Sky Sports F1. “There are no words for it.” Last week and the week before, that automobile finished second. And anything we did to it was dreadful.
“Lewis made it out there.” But, George, I can only sympathize with the two people behind the wheel of such a horrible vehicle. “I think straight line speed was one issue, but probably not the main factor,” Wolff remarked. “The main factor was that we couldn’t go around the corners with a bigger wing at the necessary speed, and we were killing the tyres, eating them up in a matter of laps.”
“We are clearly not the world champions on sprint race weekends,” he remarked. We do some terrific work here to stay on pace. “However, that still doesn’t explain what went wrong.” That car almost drove on three wheels rather than four.” Wolff went on to explain Russell’s retirement: “George’s issue was the power unit at the end, we were over all metrics on cooling,” Wolff said.”It was the PU’s final race, but it is what it is.” I’m not sure if we would have completed the point.”
Also read: Verstappen wins pole position in FP before a massive storm strikes Interlagos
