George Russell says it is about managing expectations for Mercedes in F1 2023 as he reckons set-up different to Lewis Hamilton is not wrong.
It has been a quiet start to the campaign for Mercedes and its drivers Russell and Lewis Hamilton. For both, they were extremely consistent from the middle of 2022 to the end and so much so, the youngster took his maiden Grand Prix win at Interlagos.
As has been well documented, 2022 started sluggishly for both Mercedes drivers but they almost pulled off runners up spot in both championships in the end. The 2023 season has started slowly enough once more as pre-season testing was not as good as had been first expected to be so.
Russell was confident going into Bahrain but a sluggish drive saw him net seventh followed by fourth in Jeddah. However, Australia saw the Brit start from the from the front row, lead and suffer a power unit failure, Hamilton of course took second. The Brackley team could be on the right track, despite the dominance of Red Bull so far.
But they are not going far ahead into it. “I think it’s a case of managing expectations, and just focusing on yourself and that development,” said Russell. “We all believed over the winter what we were doing was correct because it was an evolution of what we did throughout last year”.
“And we all saw the improvements we made as a team throughout last year to win a race at the end of the year and be fighting at the front. Yeah, it caught us by surprise to see the lack of performance when we hit the track in Bahrain and that’s why we were quick to change our approach”.
“I think already on the Saturday night of the Bahrain Grand Prix, we were trying different things, going in a different direction with the development because we recognised we’d maybe gone too far. So I’m not going to sit here and say we’re incredibly optimistic. All I will say is we are making improvements and that should translate into lap time. But we recognise that Red Bull are over a second down the road at the moment,” summed up Russell.
It’s a step by step approach for Russell as it is for the rest of the paddock as Red Bull really are in a league of their own. Going back to Jeddah, Mercedes finished fourth and fifth but there was a discussion on the set-up where Hamilton felt his teammate had the wrong but it just worked for him but the latter reckoned it wasn’t all luck.
“I don’t think there’s any luck in it at all, I think it’s down to the preparation you put in before the event and the changes we made overnight, I knew that was going to be the right direction with the work we did with the team,” said Russell.
“And I believed it was going to be better than the setup that Lewis opted for. So yeah, I think everybody’s got different preferences. I was happy with the direction I took and with the work I’m doing with the engineers.” Five seasons in and of course he is no longer a new kid on the block, but Russell realises that it comes down to team-work and confidence that has been built up.
Of course, with set up as he advised, it comes down to personal choice and yes he got it right on race day. Had it not been for the power unit failure in Melbourne, it could have been very positive too. Perhaps he and the team are definitely headed in the right direction as things now stand.
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