George Russell says F1 2023 had many missed opportunities even though he upped his pace in qualifying and race from 2022.
Having had a sound F1 2022 season where he finished fourth scoring 275 points, he dropped to eighth in 2023, scoring just 175. Not just that, from one win and eight podiums, he managed just the two this year in a ‘strange’ season.
Mercedes’ Russell believes he had the pace and perhaps he was rewarded less in terms of points and or podiums in 2023 than he deserved. “It’s been a very, very strange season,” he said. “It’s been a season where we’ve had a lot of pace at times, but never achieved the results that I felt were deserved, or were possible.
“So we definitely need to try and understand why that was. There’s been a huge amount of missed opportunities, in many regards. It really hasn’t been a smooth season. But I think when everything’s flowing, when everything’s working, right, luck tends to be on your side. But when, you know, you’re on the backfoot, you tend to have bad luck.
“I’m not one for believing in luck. I think you make your own luck. So we just need to be faster. And Lady Luck will be with us,” summed up Russell, who feels he upped his game whether in qualifying and or races but it didn’t translate into results somehow which they will analyse in this winter break.
“It’s definitely something I’m going to look at over the winter, because the results were so smooth-flowing last year, I think we finished in the top five more than any other driver,” said Russell. “And this year, I feel that I’ve upped my game in my quali pace and upped my game in my race pace. And we’ve definitely been on the backfoot. But we definitely have more competition this year, with McLaren joining the fight in the second half, Aston being there at the start of the season.”
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