George Russell has acknowledged that the Bahrain Grampuri results portend a good for Mercedes, who will have a competitive Formula 1 season, but he believes he is an outsider of the driver’s championship.
Mercedes struggles in hot conditions these days, with smooth truck surfaces and cool temperatures offering the most competitive opportunities. However, after securing Bahrain’s best second place of the season (third podium in four races), Russell says it’s a particularly important result as it shows progress in the car’s performance.
“I have a lot of confidence,” Russell said. “This was a real test for us. Our car likes cold conditions and the competitiveness we showed in China and Suzuka was not a big surprise. But this would be a question mark.
Despite the positive indications, Russell believes the difference in pace with McLaren is still too big to count himself as a true title contender, despite only drifting 14 points from championship leader Rand Norris.
“I want to say that, but honestly, I don’t think we are. McLaren is way too dominant right now,” he admitted. “I think this is probably their peak performance and what we saw in Bahrain this week. What we saw in China and Suzuka are probably the worst scenarios, and we obviously got one win from these two races.
“So we have to keep picking up points, keep picking up pieces, and this weekend we picked up pieces to get a P2, and we did that in Melbourne to get a P3.
Team principal Totowolf reflects Russell’s encouragement from Bahrain’s outcome (what he called an “unbelievable” drive from the British), and is a bit optimistic that McLaren can be caught.
“We would have expected Bahrain to be one of the very difficult forums for us due to its warm surroundings and very granular coarse circuits,” Wolf said. “In the end we qualified for the P2 and P4. There were cars that could be solid on the podium, but that’s better than we expected.
“So if you win, you can call race a success, but in situations you can say that it was much better than we expected.
“If you look at where McLaren was last year, I think they were fourth and sixth, fifth and sixth, this sort of thing. You can see how quickly you can turn the tide. Perhaps we were missing a few tens of minutes.
“But, we definitely need to post the best games and see how it goes on with other tracks.”