Russell confident Mercedes on cusp of 'big leap' back to top
After two seasons struggling to regain their championship-winning form, Mercedes are definitely back on an upward trajectory and George Russell is confident they'll be back to winning races within the year.
Russell joined the team after a long apprenticeship at Williams at the start of 2022, but that coincided with the end of the marque's run of eight consecutive constructors championship as Red Bull became dominant.
New rules bringing back ground effect aerodynamics left the team struggling with 'porpoising' and an ill-fated 'zero sidepod' design concept also took its toll, meaning the team hasn't won a victory since Russell won at Brazil in 2022.
But recent races have seen Mercedes moving back up the order, and Russell and his team mate Lewis Hamilton finished in the top four in consecutive races in Montreal and Barcelona.
While still not a match for the pace of Red Bull and McLaren, Russell is confident that they are just one big leap away from competing for wins on a regular basis this season, or early next year.
"We had the fastest car [in Montreal]," Russell stated. "You’re not going to have the fastest car every single weekend and we really feel like we’re riding a [wave], a bit of a momentum has shifted.
"It’s with us and we know what we need to do to take the next big leap with our updates, so we’re feeling confident," he added. “It’s all gelling, it’s all coming together. We just need to keep on applying that pressure.
"We’re all feeling excited for the remainder of the season," he said. “We’ve got more wind tunnel time than all of our rivals and we know what we need to do to make these big strides now.
"We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but I’m 100 per cent confident we’ll win races this year now and going into next year with the pace we showed last week and the pace we showed this week," he insisted.
"We’re fourth in the constructors’ championship at the moment," he pointed out. "We’ve led two races in two weekends now since having the upgrades. I don’t think we’d have expected that at the start of the season.”
Both Mercedes cars were within five seconds of race winner in the mixed conditions in Montreal, but it was not as close in Barcelona.
"We finished, I don’t know how many seconds behind the win - 20 seconds, maybe? Which is still a lot in the scheme of things," Russell admitted, adding that he felt the real gap might have been even bigger than that.
"[Verstappen]’s got the fastest car. You know, you look at his pace: it was very well controlled in that first stint,” Russell said. “He was probably managing six-tenths across the lap in the high-speed corners.
"When you’ve got that buffer you can afford to manage the tyres more," he added. “Lando caught him, but Max turned it up when he needed to. He is one of the best drivers ever. It's like Lewis in the Mercedes era."
Russell is heir apparent to the crown at Mercedes now that Hamilton has confirmed he will be joining Ferrari at the end of the season.
It's not known who will take over as his team mate, but Formula 2 rising star Andrea Kimi Antonelli hs believed to the the front runner for Hamilton's soon to be vacant seat.
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