(Motorsport) George Russell has admitted that Mercedes are unlikely to compete against Red Bull and Ferrari at the Bahrain Grand Prix with reigning champion Max Verstappen looking dominant in pre-season testing. In what was a major setback for the Silver Arrows, Russell’s W14 suffered a hydraulic issue, resulting in Ferrari topping the speed chart through Carlos Sainz. The most successful team in Formula 1 history look to be the biggest competitors for Red Bull Racing this season.
Speaking ahead of the upcoming season, Mercedes diver George Russell said “You definitely head into a season believing. Every point of my career, I’ve always gone in believing, but you need to take a rational view once you get to the track you learn. I think we definitely believe eventually we will have a car capable of getting into that fight, whether we’re going to have that next weekend in Bahrain, I think may be a bit of a stretch.
“They look very strong, they look very stable, the car is looking really strong and obviously Max is performing really well, so I think realistically it will be a stretch for next week, but there’s no reason why eventually we can’t get there at some point this year.”
Despite Mercedes’ struggles in 2022, Russell outperformed seven time World Champion Lewis Hamilton, winning the only race for the Silver Arrows last season. Insisting that his team are in a better position than last season, Russell said “Definitely in terms of feeling, it feels a step in the right direction but as we know in this sport, it’s not all about feeling, it’s ultimately about lap time.
“I think compared to this time 12 months ago, things are running a lot smoother, obviously when we were here last year there were a lot of alarm bells ringing with the porpoising, unsure how to solve it, we were a bit lost. The car characteristics were not good. Reliability has been strong so far to allow us to do the test programme, for sure we’ve got things we need to improve with the car, but I’d say generally speaking we’re roughly where we would have expected to be at this time of year.”
As for Ferrari, the fastest driver on Friday’s pre-season testing Carlos Sainz said “(It’s been) smooth, very smooth. To be honest, I’m quite happy with how we’ve been able to run, the quantity of tests that we’ve managed to do over these first few days, exploring the limits of the setup, trying to put the car in different places and learning a lot from it, which is a target that I had from last year that I know we couldn’t do, and this year so far I’m managing to do it.
“It feels like an evolution of last year. It feels very similar to driving and there hasn’t been major changes going on in the car or the concept, so trying to improve the good pace that we had last year and obviously now putting our focus on our weaknesses of last year.”
Charles Leclerc, who finished runner-up in the 2022 season said that he is focusing on his own team’s development rather than being distracted by Red Bull’s pre-season performance. Pre-season testing is not necessarily the best indication of overall performance as teams use this opportunity to test different fuel loads and engine modes with Leclerc suggesting that Red Bull might be running closer to their full potential than Ferrari.
The Monegasque driver said “Of course it is our target (to beat Red Bull). They had a different programme than us, but again, it is not what I want to look at for now. We really want to focus on ourselves, try to get the data that we need as a team to be as ready as possible for the first race.”
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