Mercedes: "We've left ourselves with more work tomorrow than we hoped"

Mercedes looked to be certain of a front-row lockout for the Russian Grand Prix, but the team were caught out with the rapidly changing track conditions in the final qualifying session. Combined with Lewis Hamilton's mistake at the entry of the pitlane, it was a disastrous afternoon for the German team. 

Frustrated 

In the end, Lewis Hamilton qualified in fourth-place, with Valtteri Bottas starting from seventh on the grid. Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin reflects on the mistake made. 

"A frustrating end to a qualifying session where we'd been looking very strong throughout. The conditions were quite unusual in that was taking a long time to transition to dry. The intermediate was holding on well and not degrading and our plan in the final session was to set a time on the intermediates before swapping to dry tyres. Unfortunately, a single lap on the dry tyres wasn't enough to get it working so we got jumped by a number of cars at the finish," he explained in the Mercedes press release. 

Shovlin found time to find the positives. In the long-runs from FP2, Hamilton and Bottas produced good results which he points to. "It was encouraging to see the car working well in the wet but we've left ourselves with more work to do tomorrow than we hoped. However, our pace on Friday was strong so anything is possible," he added.