Mercedes driver George Russell explains the new self-confidence of the star brand, but also points out existing question marks about the balance of power
The constructors’ championship for the 2024 Formula 1 season speaks for itself: Red Bull is number one, followed by McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes. But does that reflect the current balance of power after 13 of 24 Grands Prix? Mercedes driver George Russell disputes that
After the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring near Budapest, he said: “We’re undoubtedly faster than Ferrari, but we’re not a million miles behind Red Bull either.”
In other words: Mercedes is (almost) at the front of Formula 1, having lagged well behind the three other teams mentioned at the start of the season. Now things are different, because since Canada, the star brand has taken 20 or more points per race weekend, scored two victories and visited the podium five times in a row.
Or as Russell puts it: “We were fastest in two of the last five Grands Prix and number two or number three in the other three races.”
In Hungary, Mercedes delivered “probably the weakest weekend” so far, says Russell. “But Lewis still ended up on the podium.” This shows how much progress Mercedes has made in recent weeks.
How temperature-sensitive is the Mercedes?
“So we are taking the positives with us,” says Russell, but there are still question marks over the balance of power from a Mercedes perspective: “We still need to understand why our performance fluctuates so much depending on the temperature. Maybe it’s just normal fluctuations over the course of the season. But there does seem to be a correlation with the temperatures.”
And the trend in recent races has been: If it is a little cooler, the Silver Arrows fly all the more. This was the case in qualifying for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, for example, but McLaren team boss Andrea Stella did not want to attribute this solely to the weather
Why Russell was out early in qualifying
Russell, on the other hand, did a completely different kind of research, because he had already been eliminated in Q1 in Hungary: 0.082 seconds were missing to progress to the second round of qualifying.
“Ultimately, it was a matter of communication,” explains the Mercedes driver, saying that his team “collectively made three mistakes”. But Russell doesn’t say which ones. Just this much: “If we had avoided just one of them, we would have got through. So it was down to communication. But we will learn from this for the future. We have recognized what we could have done better. “
