Seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton says finishing second in the Mexico City Grand Prix on Sunday was a great result considering he started the race from sixth place.

It’s a great result considering we started from P6 and amazing day for the team. We pushed hard and I’m proud of the whole team for all their work. It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for us so it’s great to finally bounce back. The car felt much better today, and the pace was strong. Today was about the balance of the car and managing the tyres and we managed to do that well. We dug really deep this weekend to improve the set-up and get it right and the result today shows the hard work everyone in the team has put in to achieve that. Now I can’t wait to get to Brazil and hopefully continue with the strong pace of the car.

George Russell started the race from eighth place and came home in sixth and speaking following the action he commented saying:

I felt really good in the car today, the pace was there so definitely a positive from this weekend. I was right behind Carlos wanting to overtake when my brakes overheated. We were concerned about making it to the end, so I had to back off and that’s where I lost all the temperature in the tyres and didn’t manage to get them back into the right window. It was like driving on ice for the last 20 laps so I’m glad I managed to finish in P6. Another difficult weekend for us but the car was performing well. We just need to have some clean weekends and show consistency, but I’m confident we’ll achieve that. I’m looking forward to Brazil and I hope that we will show some good pace there too and hopefully we will be in a position to fight for the podium.

Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 Team Principal and CEO Toto Wolff says that the Brackley-based outfit had a great race weekend in Mexico. Speaking following the race he commented saying:

We had a strong car today so we’re happy with the result and it gives us confidence. Once Lewis managed to get into free air, the lap times were good and great job that he managed to get fastest lap at the end of the race too. The pace was there and that’s a positive for us building on the last two races. Tyre management at this track is so marginal, a few degrees of track temperature and they’re out of the window and the other way around. George unfortunately totally ran out of tyres, so it was tough for him to defend. Still, a strong result for him today and he fought well to keep the position from Daniel in the final lap. We don’t know yet how we will perform in Brazil next week. We will keep both feet on the ground, do our best job there and hopefully we’re in position to fight at the front.

Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 Team Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin commented saying:

A great drive by Lewis to take second place from sixth on the grid. We’ve had a tough run of races recently and it’s really encouraging to see the pace in the car, especially on a weekend where we have found it really difficult to get it into the window. George was disappointed to lose the place to Lando in the final stages, but he was clearly much quicker than Carlos on the restart and whilst it’s easy with hindsight to say we should have backed him off and preserved the tyres, we’d rather be a team that’s looking forward in races than one that is looking behind. We’ve not had an easy weekend here, it’s been difficult, very difficult to keep the tyres in the right window and we were very disappointed with how qualifying went. However, to leave here having matched Ferrari on points given our grid positions is encouraging. The car was working well, we were managing brakes and we’ll fix that for next year but the pace was strong. We can improve on this weekend and we’ll be working hard preparing for the sprint race next weekend in Brazil.

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