Mercedes laments “worst performance of the season” as George Russell’s tyres ‘fell off a cliff’ 

Toto Wolff was left furious believing the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was the “worst performance of the year so far” for Mercedes.

The Silver Arrows finished fifth (George Russell) and sixth (Andrea Kimi Antonelli) in Jeddah, as it significantly lagged behind rivals McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari.

Wolff was confused as to why Mercedes lacked pace, especially when it has had a strong start to the 2025 Formula 1 season entering the grand prix second in the championship.

“It was clearly our worst performance of the year so far,” the Mercedes boss said. “The pace just dropped away with blistering, overheating tyres and so far we haven’t got an explanation.”

The fact that Mercedes was quick in qualifying – Russell started the grand prix in third – made the frustration deeper for Wolff.

He added: “You manage your expectations being the second quickest – and even that is not obviously what we would wish to achieve – and then you see the race panning out like it did. It just adds to the frustration of the situation.”

Toto Wolff, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Russell shared Wolff’s frustrations having struggled to manage his Pirelli tyres, telling Sky Sports F1 “they were massively overheating”.

“I was pushing hard to stay with Max at the beginning of the second stint,” he added, “but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold on and we fell off that cliff towards the end.

“I was dropping a second a lap in the last 15 laps, but to be fair, we just didn’t have the pace and even if I had managed more, I think I still would have come home in P5.

“We know that it’s a bit of a weakness of our car at the moment. And coming home P5  on a bad day – we’ll take it – but we need to try and improve it quickly.”

Russell added that the lack of performance wasn’t caused by hotter temperatures on track: “It’s about how fast we’re going through these corners, and for whatever reason, we’ve generated more temperature than our rivals.

“Then suddenly you get to a point where the tyres are like a balloon. We had blistering on the front, blistering on the rear, and then suddenly you just have no grip from the tyre at all.”

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This comes after a positive start to the 2025 season for Russell, who claimed three podiums across the opening four grands prix including a runner-up finish in Bahrain last weekend.

“We need to understand why Bahrain was so positive, because that’s also an overheating track, but a very different type of overheating to what you experience here in Jeddah,” he said.

“We had higher hopes for the race today than we had for Bahrain, and it kind of turned out the opposite.”

Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren and Mark Mann-Bryans

Photos from Saudi Arabian GP – Race