George Russell says Mercedes has been under scrutiny far more in their slump, as he adds on the recent progress and if they can continue.
Ever since Mercedes lost the drivers’ title to Red Bull and Max Verstappen in 2021, the German outfit has seen a slump where they have gone from being champions to now trailing their rivals, playing a catch-up game in the new era which started in 2022.
In fact, they have had to abandon trajectories after not securing the results that they would have liked, allowing the likes of Ferrari and McLaren to get ahead of them as well. So much so, that Lewis Hamilton is ending his ties at the end of the 2024 season.
What seemed like the unthinkable, will happen in 2025 when Hamilton will race for Ferrari. But since 2022, Mercedes has been under lot of media trials. Considering that they have a seven-time world champion, the media has been seemingly hard on them.
At least, Russell feels like that. He reckons there has been a lot of scrutiny on Mercedes for their shortcomings, when others have faltered too especially against Red Bull. “If I’m being honest, I think there’s been a lot of scrutiny upon Mercedes in these three years because I think everybody’s had some challenges along the way,” he said.
“You take Red Bull out of the equation, who have found themselves on a on a great path and been able to build upon. But we’ve all found ourselves in catch-up mode and we were battling with Ferrari, who were well ahead of us in 2022. They fell behind us in ’23 and now they’re just ahead but they’re still not fighting for the championship right now.
“And then McLaren had a tough couple of years. Now they’re back at the front where they were 15 years ago. So, as I said, there’s a lot of scrutiny of Mercedes about the relative failure that we’ve had. But this is Formula 1, it is bloody challenging, and there’s so many great teams and designers up and down this field.
“I think we are making progress, but it just never happens overnight, and we saw that during the Mercedes dominance of these teams behind: Ferrari Red Bull, they could never just turn it up. And it took Red Bull how many years before they fought Mercedes in the championship, so I think that’s just a sport, and I hope in 2026 it’s not as variable because, as drivers, you all want kind of an equal opportunity to showcase your abilities and battle it out on track,” summed up Russell.
Amid the struggles that Mercedes has faced, Russell feels it has smoothened out since they first got it wrong in 2022. After the zeropod failure, the team has had to take different routes at times, but it hasn’t been a large change in concept per se.
But Russell admits that Mercedes hasn’t found the real breakthrough as their rivals did in this period to turn their fortunes around as yet. “Those zig zags have maybe reduced in magnitude over these years,” he stated. “So, when we first got the car in 2022 we probably made a big change.
“Realised we got it wrong, we went to a big change in the other direction, and it’s slowly filtering down to more incremental changes. And I think we’ve recognised small changes can bring big performance. And I think the front wing was quite interesting in Monaco and Canada. I mean, the true answer is we don’t know at the moment.
“Everybody is moving forward, and that’s the impressive thing with Formula 1, and let’s hope that is the case, because it would be great if you have four teams at the front battling it out for victory. I’m not going to say it’s a breakthrough, because we definitely haven’t made the step that you’ve seen other teams make so suddenly.
“McLaren last year, Aston Martin in the ’22 to ’23 season. But we just need to keep on chipping away at it. And I think it’s been clear that there is a lot more potential in the car than we’ve gotten out of it. And we’ve perhaps gone in a slightly wrong direction with the development previously, but we’ve sort of changed our path again, and we’re pretty confident that the path we’re on is the right one, as I said.
“When it’s going to translate into results, I don’t know. It’s definitely translated into laptime. That was pretty clear in Monaco and Canada, that we made a step in the right direction. But as I said, it’s pretty competitive now. And if there’s going to be one or two times between the top four teams, it doesn’t take a lot to be able to jump 3, 4, 5 places,” summed up Russell.
While Monaco was Monaco, the upswing in Canada was to be seen for Mercedes where it was in a genuine fight for a race win against Red Bull and McLaren. Russell secured pole and put himself in a good position. It remains to be seen how they can capitalise on it.
The front wing update to go with floor changes since Monaco has aided them well but only time will tell if they can be consistent. “I think Red Bull have had..it’s no secret they’ve struggled a bit with their car these last three races,” said Russell. “So I think we need to see how their performance turns out in Barcelona, which is a little bit more of a conventional circuit.
“But this pace increase that we’ve seen from us in Canada, it hasn’t been a surprise to us because all the numbers back at the factory told us we’re going to be finding a big chunk of performance with these upgrades. So Barcelona is going to be interesting for everybody, but I’m confident we can be in the fight.
“Red Bull have struggled a little bit the last couple of races, yet they’ve still won two of the last three. So I expect them to probably take a small step when we go back to the European races on more conventional circuits. But I really think our performance step is true and it’s real, as I said. And I think we can be in this fight with McLaren. Let’s hope we can continue being in the fight with Max. And let’s see with Ferrari, they obviously had a bit of an off weekend in Canada,” summed up Russell.
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on shocking Canadian GP
Here’s George Russell, Toto Wolff on podium
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