A mistake by George Russell on his final qualifying lap for last night’s Mexican GP – the 20th Formula One race of the year – and a minor engine problem in Lewis Hamilton’s W13 prevented Mercedes from pole position at the circuit Rodriguez Brothers.

A pole position at this track, where overtaking is relatively difficult, would be very useful for Mercedes as they clinched their first win of the year with the badly battered W13, which the Brackley team has been trying to understand and exploit since its inception hunt season.

On the other hand, the top speed dominance of Max Verstappen’s RB18, an enduring virtue of the Milton Keynes car this year, would remain a threat to Mercedes in today’s race – however fiercely the two Brits defend. Consequently, both Russell and Hamilton agree that Mercedes’ first win of the year could only be achieved through strategy.

“I think on those two days we had the fastest car and if you have the fastest car there’s no reason why you can’t win the race.”pointed to Russell who tonight claims the first win of his Formula 1 career. “I think Max did a great job today as he does every weekend but it will be very difficult to get past him. He wins three tenths from us on the straights.”

The Englishman added: “Obviously we can beat Red Bull but I don’t think we can overtake them on track. So we have to rely on strategy. It will be a race with one or two pit stops and the presence of Lewis and I on the Up front will allow us to be aggressive. It allows us to do something different with the strategy, we’ll see.”

Lewis Hamilton, who was just 5ms slower than Russell in Q3 of yesterday’s qualifying, claimed he was concerned about the 0.309s gap to Verstappen: “I think so [η Red Bull] ahead of us, three tenths of a second still makes a huge difference.” said the seven-time world champion. “But we can put them under some pressure with the strategy in the game,” closed.

The 38-year-old explains how it works “I had some engine problems in Q3 but I’m not sure what it was”, adding that the difference might have been a little smaller than Verstappen without them. And he concluded: “I definitely feel like we still have a lot of speed, but the fact that we’re so close is impressive and I think everyone at the factory should be very proud.”

Photo credit: Associated Press