Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell pleased with current breakthrough after going through the the lull period.
Since the 2021 F1 season, Mercedes has had to dig deep to secure multiple race wins in a season. It has taken them three years to secure that after the lows in 2022 and 2023. Even the current breakthrough came about after resignation that it won’t work this year too.
So much so that Hamilton already decided ahead of the 2024 F1 season to leave Mercedes for Ferrari in 2025. But ever since Monaco when they brought an update to its floor, there has been steady progress in the races until the back-to-back wins situation.
Granted that Red Bull and Ferrari has underperformed in the recent races with only McLaren posing a larger challenge, Mercedes not only made the most of the opportunity, but showed genuine pace to be in the fight for wins and or podiums at least.
This success has come after hardwork behind the scenes despite losing some key personnel over the years. Both Hamilton and Russell have done their side of the job too, to hang on. The latter joined the team when it started its low cycle and now has to lead them.
As for the former, his experience certainly has helped Mercedes to float itself. “I’m already like, I couldn’t be more proud of the people that I work with in this team and I couldn’t be more grateful to them and to Mercedes,” he said. “Mercedes have changed my life and I was young supporting me at 13 years of age and then given me the chance to be a F1 driver for them and then taking me on to this team and putting all their faith behind me all these years.
“So it’s been amazing and we’ve gone through our difficult times but we’ve always come out with our heads high and I think really stayed very, very true to really good values. And so for us to now have gone through this difficult phase and us now slowly building back up to fighting for wins is a great, great feeling.
“And I’m proud of the work George and I are doing with the team. And I’m really excited for about this next few months that we have ahead of us.” At the same time, Russell echoed his sentiments and added: “It’s a really exciting time for us. And it felt at some point over these last two and a half years questioning, are we ever going to be rewarded for all of this hard work and dedication, sacrifice that the whole team are putting in to try and turn this around and bring Mercedes back to the top.
“So already the fact that we have three wins to our name this year is a huge achievement for the team, especially where we started out in Bahrain. Seeing the challenges other teams are having, bringing upgrades to the car, maybe not quite working as they first expected.
“We feel that we’re on a really exciting journey. But we know that we’re on the right track and there’s a lot of excitement going into the second half of the season into next season as well. So I think it’s an exciting time for us and it’s a great time for the sport as well.”
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on his struggles
Here’s Toto Wolff on not being worried about Andrea Kimi Antonelli
Here’s Mercedes on initial findings regarding George Russell
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact