The Mercedes team has taken a big swing by introducing a substantial aerodynamic update package at a circuit Formula 1 hasn't visited since 2017. Has it missed? Probably not – but, because the upgrade is a major one, Mercedes has committed to it on both cars so it has been unable to run back-to-back comparisons between old and new in identical conditions. This has added to the challenges of understanding why the W17 seems to have coped notably poorly with the Sepang track's abrasive asphalt surface.
George Russell
Championship leader Kimi Antonelli set the fourth-fastest time in qualifying after a mistake in Q2 meant he needed to use another set of the Pirelli C4 soft tyres, leaving him with just one remaining for Q3. George Russell was eighth fastest, though both Mercedes drivers will gain a place on the grid owing to Isack Hadjar's engine penalty.
"That is the big question mark," said George Russell when asked by Autosport if the team had found it difficult to extract the potential of the new package.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli
"If you could have done a direct back-to-back it would have been great to know, but that's the challenge of this sport. If I put the upgrade package on last week, even if it was worse, we probably still would have been on pole and we'd have been saying it was fantastic. And equally, if we had the old car here, maybe the result would have been even worse. So that's the challenge. As a team we have yet to have, let's say, a bad race this whole season and this was clearly a very bad qualifying for us."
The Mercedes upgrade features a new floor with major revisions to the leading edge, diffuser, and furniture around the rear wheels. More significantly it adopts a very different sidepod profile which it's understood has required the internal cooling architecture to be redesigned.
Source: Autosport
