Toto Wolff explains George Russell’s advantage over Lewis Hamilton at Imola

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Lewis Hamilton was “stuck” behind a DRS train at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix which contributed to his disappointing 13th place finish and explains why team-mate George Russell was able to finish fourth in an “undriveable” Mercedes car, Toto Wolff has said.

Russell and Hamilton qualified 11th and 14th respectively following Saturday’s F1 Sprint, after failing to improve their grid position from Friday’s qualifying session, but their races took different turns on Sunday.

Although both drivers continued to struggle with the ‘porpoising’ of the Mercedes, Russell was able to move through the field and up to sixth after three drivers went off the track at the opening corner.

The 24-year-old then passed Kevin Magnussen before he benefited from Charles Leclerc’s late spin to take fourth position, with Wolff later hailing Russell for an “outstanding race” in the circumstances of the performance of the Mercedes car.

Hamilton, meanwhile, ruled out his title chances after failing to pass Pierre Gasly at the back of the midfield battle and finishing outside of the points in one of the worst races of his 16-year career.

With the race starting in wet conditions, DRS, which is designed to increase overtaking opportunities, was not enabled until midway through the race. When it was, Hamilton was stuck in a DRS train, which is where a string of drivers are close enough to each other to all have DRS enabled, and therefore any advantage is ruled out.

"You see that when there is a DRS train like we had in the Sprint race, none of them could overtake," Wolff explained. "It's really if you're being boxed in, in a train of cars, it's just almost impossible to overtake.

"I think Lewis had much more pace than [Pierre] Gasly or [Alex] Albon or all the other guys in front of him, but there's one DRS straight, and if you haven't got the straight-line speed, you can't pass.

“I think both drivers are doing the utmost and outperforming the car at the moment. We’ve seen that reaping the results for George, who did an outstanding race, a perfect start and then handled a car that was that wasn’t tuned optimally, and Lewis was just stuck there in the back.”

Russell later revealed that the ‘porpoising’ and bouncing of the Mercedes had given him chest pains, after Wolff apologised to Hamilton for the car the team have produced for the 2022 season.

“We saw from George what the car can do in free air but we are not good enough for a world champion, not worthy for a world champion,” Wolff added. “We just need to fix the car.

“I think we are going to look at things for Miami. I think we can make a step in the understanding of the car. It’s another day, we just really need to understand more and bring development to the car which will fix the bouncing.”