George Russell rejects Lewis Hamilton’s claims about car setup at Mercedes – ‘There’s no luck in it at all’

George Russell says there is no luck in choosing the right setup following Lewis Hamilton’s suggestion his teammate was lucky when finding a better balance for his car.

It comes after last season when Hamilton was beaten by his teammate over a Formula 1 campaign for just the third time in his career.

“I don’t think there’s any luck in it at all,” Russell told the media ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix. “I think it’s down to the preparation you put in before the event.

“The changes we made overnight, I knew that was going to be the right direction with the work we did with the team, and I believed it was going to be better than the setup that Lewis opted for.

“I think everybody’s got different preferences. I was happy with the direction I took and the work I’m doing with the engineers.”

Hamilton’s pair of fifth places put him two points ahead of Russell, who finished seventh in Bahrain and fourth in Jeddah.

Both drivers have been open about their pace deficit to Red Bull with Mercedes conceding they will have to change their design philosophy.

When asked to clarify his claims about car setup, Hamilton said: “I think people probably, from my choice of words at the weekend, I want to reiterate how great a job George did on the weekend.

“I think the thing I was commenting on is that there’s one specific thing that you can change in the suspension that you have to do over Friday night.

“And when you make that change, once you start FP3, you can’t change it for the rest of the weekend, so when you make that change, you’re basically rolling the dice – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

“I’ve done it in the past, sometimes it hasn’t worked, sometimes it has, and it worked great for George and he did a great job.

“The thing that I was lacking in the race was a lot of front end, which that setup gives you. In hindsight, that would have been great.

“We took lots of learnings from it – I think race pace was quite decent, particularly in the second stint.

“And for us to move forward and get fourth and fifth place was great points for the team and a great result considering where we are in terms of performance deficit.”