Mercedes pair struggle on softs

While wets look likely to be the order of the day on Sunday, qualifying could be an issue for Mercedes pair as they struggle with softs.

Looking good on the mediums and the hards – the only team to run the white-banded rubber – George Russell and Kimi Antonelli only appeared to struggle when they fitted the softs, both having a number of ‘moments’.

While the Briton finished 7th and 10th in the two session, his Italian teammate was over a second off the pace in both.

“It was a really up and down day because every time we had the medium or the hard tyre on, we were right in the top two of the time sheets and every lap felt good, felt confident,” explained Russell.

“And then we put the soft on, we didn’t go much quicker,” he continued. “Clearly there is a bit of pace in the car and it’s just getting the most out of the tyre, so we need to understand why that is. Let’s see what we can achieve overnight.

“If the session stopped off with a hard tyre and if the session stopped after the medium tyre and FP1, I’d have said definitely we’re there or thereabouts,” he said. “But obviously you don’t qualify under the hard or the medium tyre, you qualify on the soft tyre, and we don’t seem so competitive on that one. But I’m sure we can find some improvements tonight.”

“It was I think quite a positive day,” said his rookie teammate, “there’s some work to do on single lap, just getting the tyres in the right window, but overall I felt pretty good.

“I did a little mistake at the end,” he admitted, “but overall I think I’m getting more and more confidence up, and I think the long run was quite positive today.

“The C5 is a compound I’ve never really used, so definitely I’m learning it, especially the warm-up is quite tricky, but we’ve got some good data ahead of tomorrow.”

Check out our Friday gallery from Albert Park here.