Mercedes will fight for F1 wins after ‘tremendous progress’ says Russell

As Mercedes brings another upgrade package to Paul Ricard, George Russell says that the team finally understands the car and he's confident of fighting Ferrari and Red Bull for victories soon this season

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Mercedes team cheers George Russell as he crosses the finish line in the 2022 Azerbaijan GP

Russell takes third place in Azerbaijan, beginning a run of four Mercedes podiums in four races

Wolfgang Wilhelm/Mercedes

Could George Russell and his Mercedes team have a genuine chance of challenging for victory at Paul Ricard this weekend?

The consensus is that the characteristics of the French GP venue will be more favourable to the W13 than some tracks that we’ve visited this year, with a combination of the smooth surface, fast corners and hot conditions potentially giving the Brackley team a boost.

In addition, over recent races Mercedes has learned more about the difficult W13 and understood how to get the most out of it on a given weekend.

“We’re making a huge amount of progress and understanding how bring more performance”

Indeed, helped by the occasional mishap ahead, Lewis Hamilton has logged three third places in the last three events, further proof that Mercedes is clear ahead of the midfield battle and waiting to pick up the pieces when Red Bull and Ferrari falter.

The question now is can Mercedes get in that battle on merit, and perhaps be in a position to push the others into mistakes? Russell certainly believes that real progress has been made.

“Yeah, definitely,” he said in France on Thursday. “I feel like as a team, this is probably the first of the recent races that we’ve really got on top of the car and what we believe we need to do to bring more performance.

“Whereas if we look back at the first six races of the season, it was almost trial and error, we were still really understanding what the problems were. And we didn’t have a clear direction, or we didn’t really know as a team, the direction we had to take.

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“Now we feel pretty confident we’ve at least got a channel to follow. Whether we can actually now translate that into performance is another factor, but at least now we feel like we’ve got a clear direction.”

With soaring ambient and track temperatures France is set to be a difficult weekend for drivers and teams.

“I think it’s going to be challenging for everybody,” said Russell. “Because it’s just so hot. On a circuit like this with very long corners, the track temperature is going to be almost 60 degrees, it’s going to be really tough for the tyres, for the cars.

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“And it’s going to make quite an interesting race, I think. As always it doesn’t make the balance of the car feel that nice. It’s also quite open here, a lot of wind.

“It’s all a relative game at the end of the day. We think we will bring more performance to the car this weekend. I don’t know what the other teams have in stock, if they’re bringing anything at all or not. On paper, things should be slightly more beneficial here compared to other events.”

Russell says the optimism about this particular venue won’t steer the team into taking a different approach to the weekend.

“I think the approach doesn’t change whatsoever. I think the temperatures will benefit us, I think a slightly smoother track will also benefit us. But I think as a team, we’re making a huge amount of progress at the moment, and understanding what we need to do with the car to bring more performance.

“And I think ultimately that’s probably the biggest overriding factor as opposed to circuit specifics.”

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Hot temperatures will benefit Mercedes at Paul Ricard, Russell believes

It’s not just about the W13 improving. Eleven races into his first season in the pressure cooker environment of being team mate to Hamilton, Russell continues to impress. Being the underdog at Williams, occasionally taking advantages of favourable circumstances, is one thing. Fighting at the sharp end with the big boys is quite another.

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Remarkably Russell has finished in the top five at every race thus far this year, apart from Silverstone, where a nudge from Pierre Gasly off the grid turned him sharp left into Guanyu Zhou.

He’s been consistently impressive both on and off track, having slipped easily into the role of GPDA director.

His old pal Lando Norris commented recently that Russell has taken a more serious approach, and the man himself doesn’t deny that he’s had to adapt.

“I think every environment is different,” said Russell. “And as you grow, you mature and things change. And after three years at Williams, we were obviously fighting for every single point we could. But here, it’s a different story, we’re here to win, we’re here to fight for championships.

“And the level of which every single person is working at is higher than I’ve ever seen before. It puts it back on you as a driver and as an individual to sort of raise your game. I’m not here to play silly buggers, I’m here to win.”

Efficient starts and aggressive first laps are one intriguing sign of how Russell has improved as a driver.

“In my first three years of F1, I felt like I was being taken for a ride on the opening laps.”

“Lewis historically has always been one of the best starters in the sense of the launches. And I think since I’ve been here this year, we’ve been statistically one and two [best starters] over the course of the season. So that’s a real benefit, and positive that we’ve got to take away. And for first laps I feel much more confident.

“I think it’s the nature of the confidence you have in your race car. After a couple of races, it just sort of brought me back to my junior career days, my karting days, and things just felt a bit more natural.

“Whereas my first three years of F1, I kind of felt like I was being taken for a ride many times on those opening laps.”

Last year Russell would often qualify the Williams ahead of where it should have been, helped by the fact that the car worked well on low fuel over one lap.

63 RUSSELL George (gbr), Williams Racing F1 FW43B, action during the Formula 1 Magyar Nagydij 2021, Hungarian Grand Prix, 11th round of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship from July 30 to August 1, 2021 on the Hungaroring, in Mogyorod, near Budapest, Hungary - Photo Antonin Vincent / DPPI

Russell was dubbed ‘Mr Saturday’ during his time at Williams due to his impressive qualifying performances

Antonin Vincent / DPPI

With a full tank and race tyres it wasn’t always the most effective tool on the first lap, and he sometimes lost out. That’s now changed.

“I think naturally at Williams, we had a very fast qualifying car. But the true pace of the car was a little bit further down. Ultimately, if somebody’s just got a bit more grip, a bit more downforce, they can put their cars in a place that you can’t.

“I think Barcelona was probably the first time this year for me where I had a real on-track battle. And that was obviously with Max [Verstappen]. It just, as I said, brought me back to when I was racing F2 and F3, and it just felt natural.

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“Whereas in a Williams, I wanted to be able to do these things. But I just couldn’t, because we didn’t have the potential underneath us. And we were always on the back foot.

“There’s many factors at play here. But for sure, it’s making my life slightly easier this year than I’ve had before.”

The thorny issue of porpoising hasn’t gone away for Mercedes, although it’s not expected to be a handicap at smooth Ricard.

“I still think the underlying issue for us and for many teams, it’s still there. For sure different circuits have a different factor, no doubt. The stiffness of the cars is too stiff.

“The last two circuits have been extremely smooth. And that has made it look slightly easier, but we even saw in Silverstone, the high-speed corners, you saw the car sort of pumping up and down. It’s hundreds of kilos of variation that the cars are experiencing.

“We’ll be in the fight for victories in the second half of the season”

“You just can’t put it on the limit, when it’s varying that much. So I trust in the FIA that there will be changes for next year to make it a safer car.”

Hamilton suggested on Thursday that Mercedes has had to dig deep and address fundamental issues this year, and that his team had “sharpened our tools.”

He believes that will be a benefit when the team has a more competitive car in the future, and Russell agrees with his assessment.

“Yeah, definitely. I think life is always easier when everything is running smoothly. And sometimes things do go amiss when you’ve got a fast car, you don’t have to worry about some of the smaller details because when you’re winning, you think everything’s great.

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“The guys at Williams said a similar thing about back in 2014. During qualifying sessions, not even running high power mode at the start of Q1, just saving the engine, and sailing through and you could make some small errors, and it didn’t really result to anything, you were still there.

“Now [at Mercedes] we feel like we have to get absolutely everything out of it just to be within four-tenths of those guys at the front end.

“No doubt, I think it’s going to make us a stronger team, me a stronger driver, but on the flipside teams like Ferrari and Red Bull have been through this for the past eight years. So it goes both ways.”

Russell is bullish about recent progress and what can be achieved in the coming months.

“I do truly believe that we’ll be in the fight for victories in the second half of the season. We’re making tremendous progress at the moment. And I think as a team, we’ve got huge amount to be optimistic about, and there was always a lot of motivation and fire within this team to close the gap.

“But I think now we’re within touching distance, there’s even more. And I think the struggles we’ve been through at the start of this year probably will pay dividends going into next year because other teams haven’t faced the issues we have. And they may fall into those traps later on in the development process. So yeah, for sure we got a lot to be optimistic about.”

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