George Russell blamed overheating for his lack of pace in the F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

De📖spite qualifying third on the grid, Russell ultimately finished the race at the Jeddah Corniche 𓂃Circuit in fifth.

Russell struggled🐭 with his tyres during the second stint of the race after switching to the hards on🏅 Lap 21.

The Mercedes driver would lose out to 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Charles Leclerc into Turn 1 on Lap 38.

Just three laps later, he was overtaken by McLaren’s 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lando Norris.

While it continued Russell’s consistent start to the year, never failing to finish outside the top five, it🐻 was damage limitation for the British driver.

Reflecting on the race in Saudi Arabia, Russell told Sky Sports: “It was all about the tyres. They were massively overheating. I was pushing hard to stay with Max at the beginning of th🐷e second stint but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold on. We fell off that cliff towards the end.

“I was dropping a second a lap in the last 15 laps. To be fair, we didn’t have the past and even if I had managed more 🐎I would have still come home P5. We know that is a bit of a weakness wi꧑th our car at the moment.

“Coming home P5 on a ba🤡d day - we will take it but we need to try and improve it quickly.”

Mercedes need to understand tyre woes

Out of the leading seven cars fro🔯m the top🤡 four teams, Russell seemed the only one to encounter tyre troubles.

Teammate168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Kimi Antonelli closed to within eight seconds by the end of the race as he fended off 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lewis Hamilton behind.

Given that Bahrain is traditionally a challenging track for tyre wear, Russell was surprised to have struggled i🌼n Jeddah.

“It’s more about how fa♍st we’re going through these corners,” Russell explain꧂ed. “For whatever reason we’re generating more temperature than our rivals.

“Suddenly you get to a point where the tyres are like a balloon. We had blistering on the fro🍃nt, blistering at t💞he rear, and then suddenly you’ve got no grip from the tyres.

“We need to understand why Bahrain was so positi﷽ve because that’s also an overheating track but a dif✱ferent type of overheating to what you experience here in Jeddah.

“We probably had higher hopes for the 🌜race today than we had for Ba♊hrain but it turned out the opposite. Something to understand.”