Mercedes spent the first day of the Las Vegas Grand Prix dominating, at least on a single lap. The Silver Arrows topped both practice sessions, held in the early Italian morning, leaving all their competitors behind.
On a cold and “green” track, meaning dirty and with little grip to offer the cars, the W15s performed best on the single lap, especially with Soft tires.
Lewis Hamilton led both the first and second practice sessions, beating McLaren’s Lando Norris by 11 thousandths and his teammate George Russell by 179 thousandths in the afternoon session. In the morning, he had a comfortable lead, leaving Russell in second place almost four-tenths behind.
At the end of the day, the seven-time world champion was pleased with the W15’s qualifying simulation, but emphasized that a lot of work remains to improve the race pace if they are to contend for top positions this Sunday.
“This year, we’ve never had a day like this,” Lewis Hamilton said immediately. “The car was very good in Free Practice 1, while it wasn’t as good in Free Practice 2. There’s some work to do this evening. Honestly, it’s hard to know where we stand compared to the competition and why we were so quick today. We’ll see if the car performs well again tomorrow.”
“The warm conditions are less favorable for us. The race pace wasn’t great, so we’ll work overnight to understand how to improve it without losing single-lap pace. But it was nice to get good performance in all sectors without the car bouncing around.” – the future Ferrari driver pointed out at the end of the second free practice session for he Las Vegas Grand Prix.
George Russell shared the same view, fast on the single lap but less so on race pace. The question mark at Mercedes is why they performed so well. However, at Toto Wolff’s team, there are no illusions: McLaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull will come back stronger tomorrow. Then, the situation could, or should, change significantly.
“It went well, sure, but it was also quite disorienting because we can’t quite understand why today was so positive. I saw that Lewis did a great job as well. Let’s just say the car worked today,” George Russell said.
“Las Vegas, however, is a street circuit, and today it was a bit dirty. With that, I mean that today’s result doesn’t mean we’ll be as fast tomorrow. Probably, the others will improve a lot too.” – the British driver concluded.
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