Mercedes endured what Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord called one of their toughest Fridays of the season so far, struggling to match their rivals during practice in Malaysia.
The day marked the debut of a new package of upgrades for the Silver Arrows, featuring changes to the floor edge, sidepods, and rear diffuser. George Russell showed early promise by finishing second in FP1, though he sat nearly four tenths down on Max Verstappen's benchmark. But the afternoon session told a different story as both Russell and Kimi Antonelli slipped down the order, finishing seventh and eighth respectively after mistakes on their flying laps.
You know, I'm feeling the [extra] downforce in some of the corners, but with this amount of tyre overheating and tyre degradation, that kind of trumps everything,
Russell looked quick in the first two sectors during his soft-tyre run in FP2, only to run wide out of the final corner and miss cutting inside the bollard, forcing him to abort the lap and run through the pit lane. Antonelli suffered a similar fate, getting wide on the soft tyre and losing his lap time to track limits. Meanwhile, Charles Leclerc topped FP2, McLaren improved as the afternoon wore on, and Verstappen looked ominous on both medium and soft tyres.
Tyre wear and high degradation emerged as major headaches for the team, with Russell and his engineer discussing the issue during FP1 after noticing higher wear compared to Red Bull. The extreme conditions made it difficult to immediately evaluate the new components. “You know, I'm feeling the [extra] downforce in some of the corners, but with this amount of tyre overheating and tyre degradation, that kind of trumps everything,” Russell explained. “So, we just need to get on top of that overnight, that's more of a set-up rather than the upgrade itself, and go from there.”
Despite the troubles, Russell remains hopeful of fighting for pole position, noting that the iconic circuit provided a cool experience since he had never driven there before. Bradley Lord admitted the competitive picture resembled weekends like Hungary rather than Baku, confirming the team had no opportunity to revert on the update and must make the most of the components they brought. With overnight data work ahead, the team hopes to unlock more speed from the package before Saturday.
