George Russell: The tires were overheating a lot.

      Mercedes does not hide the fact that the results in Saudi Arabia turned out to be worse than the team expected, but problems related to overheating of the rubber did not allow them to achieve more.

      George Russell (5th): "Today everything depended on the performance of the rubber, and our tires were very hot. Moreover, at the beginning of the second leg I attacked very actively, trying to stay behind Max Verstappen, but it quickly became clear that we would not succeed.

      I tried to use the rubber more economically, but at the end of the race, on each of the last 15 laps, the pace dropped by almost a second because the tires lost efficiency. But to be honest, we just didn't have enough pace, and even if I had tried to save the rubber more, we would still have finished fifth.

      But we know that the W16 doesn't work well with tires, and that's one of the disadvantages of our car right now. It mainly manifests itself in high-speed turns: for some reason, the tires in them heat up more than their rivals. Because of this, both the front and rear tires begin to bubble, and at some point the clutch suddenly disappears.

      On the one hand, even if we finish in the top five on a bad day, we are ready to accept this result, on the other hand, this shortcoming must be corrected as soon as possible."

      Kimi Antonelli (6th): "It was a difficult race, but overall I'm happy that I finished sixth. In the first leg, I had problems with Medium tires due to understeer. The degradation of the front tyres started quite early, so our pace left a lot to be desired in the early stages of the race.

      After the pit stop, when I switched to hard tires, everything got a little better, and in the last ten laps we showed quite decent speed. But I still had to slow down because we had problems with overheating tires throughout the race.

      Today's race taught me a lot. The series of three Grands Prix in a row was intense, and now I have to analyze all the experience gained during this period and work on the mistakes. I'm also looking forward to getting some rest so that I can get ready for the Miami stage with renewed vigor."

      Toto Wolff, team principal: "This is our worst performance so far this season. The pace dropped because the tires were overheating, and it was frustrating. Before this race, we had hopes for a podium, but due to problems with the tires, we couldn't get above 5th and 6th places.

      We need to analyze everything and understand what it is related to in order to quickly find a solution that will allow us to achieve improvements. The next stage will be in Miami, and there we will also have a race on hot asphalt, so we need to try to improve our form compared to today's situation if we want to avoid a repeat of the problems.

      The racers did their best to deal with the problems. But even if George had been more active in saving rubber at certain stages of the race, he still would not have been able to hold off Charles Leclair and Lando Norris.

      Kimi continues to grow professionally, and today he finished sixth, narrowly ahead of Lewis Hamilton. This has helped us minimize our losses against our immediate rivals in the Constructors' Championship, but it is not enough to leave Saudi Arabia with a sense of satisfaction."