George Russell blasts Mercedes as "dead slow" after Imola disappointment

George Russell delivered a damning assessment of his Mercedes team’s performance in the F1 Imola Grand Prix, stating they were “dead slow” and fortunate to finish as high as they did.

Russell finished seventh, while his teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli retired from the race as the team struggled with rising temperatures.

Russell highlighted that the heat exacerbates Mercedes’ performance issues, a problem that has persisted since last year and remains unsolved.

“No, we were definitely not bad luck, we were just dead slow,” Russell told Sky Sports F1 when asked if it was an unfortunate weekend.

The trends are pretty clear: when it's hot we're slow, when it's cold we're quick, and that was the same last year. We've been doing everything with the set-up to try and find solutions, but there's clearly something more fundamental in the car.

It's not the first race of the season where we've been slower than Ferrari, and even slower than Williams, or the same pace as Williams, but we've just somehow managed to get a result out of it on these occasions. But today, we were very lucky to finish P7, in all honesty.”

Russell identified the issue on his reconnaissance lap to the grid and reported it to his engineers, but they could not pinpoint the source of his discomfort with the car.

“It was very odd. I mean on the laps to the grid I was reporting problems with the car and I thought something was wrong. The team had a good look around and saw nothing and that feeling continued for 60-odd laps after.

We do have a bit of a fundamental issue because either the fronts are overheating, or the rers are overheating, circuit to circuit. But it's not the first time we've reported that. So it was probably just the first time where all of our rivals probably had a semi-decent race.”