George Russell expects Mercedes will need to "nail" its qualifying laps if its wants to start as high as the second row for the Italian Grand Prix. Monza is a circuit where teams use lower downforce wings due to the long straights, which often leads to drivers using the 'tow' from another car to maximise their straight-line speed. This requires a lot of communication between drivers in the same team to achieve an effective result, something Mercedes has had trouble with in the past this year - notably at the Spanish GP when both Russell and Lewis Hamilton collided. Russell gave his expectations in what is often a chaotic qualifying session: "It's really close at the moment between the McLaren, Aston Martin, Ferrari and even Williams getting in the mix, especially on Saturday. "So we're going to really nail it - even to get to Q3 it's gonna be a tight battle. "If you nail it, you could be second row on the grid, if you just don't quite there you could be down in the P10 region."
Russell: Race to be challenging
Mercedes admitted it had a "messy" Friday practice after failing to get on top of its setup and being disrupted on the long runs with two red flags. Russell was over half a second off the best time set by Carlos Sainz at the end of FP2, while Lewis Hamilton was down in P18 having not run the Soft tyre. Although he was pleased with its race pace, Russell expects Mercedes' one-lap pace to be the main area to work on before qualifying. "Our Medium and the Hard [times] we did in FP1 and FP2 looked pretty competitive, then when we put the Soft on we wasn't quite as fast as we'd hoped," he said. "This generally comes down to getting the tyre in the sweet spot, so there is something to learn from that. "I think the race is going to be challenging for everybody because when you're on the skinny rear wings, there's not much of a slipstream effect, so there might be a bit more emphasis on qualifying than usual."
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