Listen to this article During Friday qualifying, Mercedes missed out on Q3 for the first time since the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix, with George Russell qualifying 11th and Lewis Hamilton down in 13th. That made the underperforming Brackley team’s exercise in damage limitation, which it had executed well in F1 2022’s first three races, an extremely difficult task at Imola. But while Mercedes was hoping to benefit from the extra Saturday sprint race to move up the order and gain a better position for Sunday’s grand prix, it was stunned to find it instead made zero progress during the 21-lap sprint. Russell finished where he started, while Hamilton even lost a spot – to AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda – and is now starting from 14th instead. Team boss Wolff admitted the weekend was a “complete write-off” and “another humbling experience” as his drivers were languishing in a midfield DRS train. “I think points scoring needs to be the minimum, but this is not where we set our expectations and therefore this weekend is a complete write-off,” Wolff conceded. “You can say ‘well, we’re trying to learn’, but we weren’t great with tyre warm-up, that’s why there is not a …