Mercedes star George Russell has demanded answers to his car's struggles this season after another disappointing qualifying session in Miami.
Russell managed to sneak into the top-10 shootout before claiming sixth on the grid. The final session of qualifying was curtailed early by a red flag caused by Charles Leclerc 's late crash, with Russell lining up ahead of the Ferrari man and Max Verstappen as a result.
But he is behind Alpine's Pierre Gasly and Haas' Kevin Magnussen, with a difficult day expected in Sunday's race. Russell's team-mate Lewis Hamilton meanwhile could only manage to qualify in 13th place after a shock elimination in Q2.
Russell has admitted that his sixth place is a flattering result, earned mostly due to Q3's early finish. And the Englishman has now called on team bosses to discover why the Silver Arrows are struggling so badly.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say quite pleased, of course I’ll take the result, it’s a very flattering result for the performance that we showed. I did a really decent lap in Q2 to just scrape through, just to get into Q3 and that’s not where we should be," Russell told Sky Sports.
“Everybody is working so, so hard to bring more performance to the car, it’s definitely not for a lack of effort and it’s just not coming to us at the moment. So there’s a lot to think about. A few questions that need answering.
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“It’s a theme of us that we generally have a better Sunday than we do on Saturday. Obviously got the Alpine and Haas around us, hopefully we can get past them, and Ferrari tend to struggle a bit more on Sunday.
“We’ll focus on tomorrow, but we need to think about the bigger picture and how we’re gonna bring that fight to the guys at the top. Everybody is working so hard to get up there. We’ll try and put in a fight with whoever is around us, but we’ll see what we can do.”
Russell has been left perplexed with the decreasing performance of his car, having finished fastest in Free Practice 1. But he insisted that there could be no excuses as he looks to move up the Drivers' Championship standings.
"The car is just not working for us this weekend. We’re struggling a lot with the balance and it’s bouncing around a little bit. The performance isn’t coming to us which is a shame as everyone is working so hard to achieve it," he added.
"As the grip has been laid down and the track has improved, we’ve seemingly got slower. Clearly, this is a bit of an outlier as a circuit as can be seen by the pace of some of the other cars. Ultimately though, we need to do a better job.
"I’m not going to take any pride in qualifying P6. We’re working for more and we’re capable of more. It’s challenging as in FP1, everything felt smooth. As the weekend has progressed, the feeling in the car has got worse."
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