Russell reveals the technical reason for Mercedes’ dominant pace at Las Vegas

Following a dominant showing from Mercedes at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, George Russell has revealed that one of the main reasons for the W15’s impressive performance was the smooth surface of the Nevadan track which allowed his team to run the car in an optimal aerodynamic window.

Ferrari were favourites heading into the Las Vegas weekend, but they were caught by surprise on Thursday when Mercedes started to display a shocking performance.

George Russell secured pole position for the second Las Vegas Grand Prix, but his team-mate Lewis Hamilton endured a tough end to his qualifying as he made a mistake on his last two flying laps in Q3.

When the red lights went out, Russell had a great start, and although he was initially challenged by the Ferraris, he managed to disappear into the distance to secure his third career victory. His team-mate Lewis Hamilton used his W15’s dominant pace in cold conditions to climb through the field and help Mercedes secure a one-two finish in Nevada.

Asked to reveal the reason why Mercedes was dominant at Las Vegas, Russell was at a loss for words, but he claimed that the smooth nature of the track might have played a significant factor in the W15’s eye-catching performance.

“It’s been a real surprise seeing how strong our pace has been and securing the pole yesterday I was so pleased with. And then I think we won the race in stint one.

“To be honest, stint one was exceptional. And I knew from there on in the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tyres and opened them up. So it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.

“It’s no secret that we struggle on the bumpy circuits and we have to lift the car quite a lot. We’ve got to make it much softer. And then we’re in a downforce window where we don’t have any.

“And it’s not that we just suddenly forget how to set the car up. It’s just certain circuits require us to put the car in a window it doesn’t like to be. And on tracks like this where it’s relatively smooth, we can get the car quite low, quite stiff, with little or no bumps around the track, we fly.

With the F1 field now moving to Qatar, Russell noted that he expects his W15 to perform well on a circuit which features a smooth asphalt and a series of long medium- and high-speed corners.

“I think we’ve got a good shot in Qatar, to be honest. Going into this triple header, I had my sights set on Qatar, even to the point that I wanted to take my freshest engine out and put an old engine in for Vegas, to save my best engine for Qatar. And I’m kind of glad we didn’t do that now.”