George Russell has highlighted his concern that Mercedes’ weaknesses are “baked in”, suggesting a quick fix is unlikely.

At Imola, the Silver Arrows suffered their worst performance of the season with Russell crossing the line seventh while team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli retired with a throttle issue.

George Russell raises long-term concern for Mercedes’ weaknesses

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

While the problem that hampered Antonelli is not thought to be a long-term concern, the pace deficit was enough to worry Russell who highlighted a trend of Mercedes this season.

“When it’s hot, we’re slow. When it’s cold, we’re quick. That was the same last year,” Russell told media including PlanetF1.com at Imola.

“We’ve been doing everything with the setup to try and find solutions, but there’s clearly something more fundamental in the car.

“I wouldn’t say we are running out of ideas to solve the tyres but, as I said, it’s sort of baked into the car.

“You look at Ferrari a few years ago, they used to be mega quick in qualifying and slow in the race. Now they’ve kind of done a U-turn and they also don’t really understand why that is.

“So we need to find a better compromise, especially ahead of the next race. We’re approaching summer and it doesn’t really bode well for us. We need to think quick.”

Throughout the Imola race, Russell was struggling with his rears and accounted that to the high temperatures of the circuit, an aspect that many other cars dealt with much better.

“It was challenging and, obviously, P7 is not where we want to be,” he said. “I struggled with the rear end of the car from the beginning and was not able to get into a good rhythm.

“With a relatively high track temperature, we were suffering from overheating on the rear axle.

“It was therefore tough to keep the tyres in the right window and the pace reflected that. We couldn’t match the leaders’ pace, so it was very much damage limitation.

“We will take the learnings from this weekend and move quickly on to Monaco.

“I am looking forward to getting out on track there. We’ve been good and consistent in qualifying this season with strong single laps and this will help next week.

“Monaco is one of these races where a lot depends on Saturday and I am confident in how we can perform there.”

Team representative Bradley Lord, who was filling in for the absent Toto Wolff, described it as Mercedes’ most difficult grand prix of the season so far.

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“To come away with P7 and a DNF is far below the standards we set ourselves as a team,” Lord said.

“From the early laps, George reported a lack of rear stability, and he struggled to keep the rear tyre temperatures under control, which led to accelerated degradation. This forced us into an early stop, and onto a two-stop strategy.

“He made his second stop under the VSC for Esteban [Ocon]’s retirement and had battled his way back into the points when the Safety Car was called out for Kimi’s DNF.

“It was clear that we would remain on track during this, and George then battled hard to the flag – he was unable to hold off Lewis [Hamilton]’s fresher-tyred Ferrari behind but then was able to hold position to the finish.”

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