惊人的乔治·罗素承认将德light Red Bull fans

Mark Scott
Max Verstappen laughs next to George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. Melbourne, April 2023.

Max Verstappen laughs next to George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. Melbourne, April 2023.

George Russell has conceded that Mercedes are going to have make “huge gains” in a very short space of time to have any chance of catching Red Bull as early as next season.

The world of F1 has been starved of an F1 title battle since the fierce 2021 duel between Mercedes and Red Bull which ended in very controversial circumstances in Abu Dhabi.

罗素是司机负责奔驰”ly F1 win since that season (Brazil, 2022) after the Silver Arrows took the wrong development path and paved the way clear for Red Bull’s latest reign of terror.

Mercedes still have a long, long way to go

Once it became clear early on that Red Bull were going to continue wiping the floor with the opposition this season, attentions soon turned to the F1 2024 campaign where they will be renewed hope that a more competitive title battle awaits us.

However, if the once mighty Mercedes are going to re-establish themselves as a serious title contender again so soon, the team have a massive job on their hands.

“We need to make huge gains,” Russell conceded on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast.

“We’ve been a bit back and forth with our development, we took one step forward, two steps back with a number of updates we brought, especially last year. We had to take a lot of performance off the car because we were struggling with the bouncing.

“But we’re definitely getting our hands wrapped around this limitation much better. We know we made a mistake over last winter, we took too much performance off the car, and the regulations naturally improved our problems a little bit.

“This is a really interesting sport. You’ve only got to rewind back to 2020 and Mercedes built probably one of the most competitive cars of all time, then in 2021 at least there was a battle between Max and Lewis for the championship.

“So you can argue that the 2020 car of Mercedes in terms of maybe not the dominance, but in terms of competitiveness, or pace delta for some of the races is not too dissimilar to Red Bull.”

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Russell was also keen for Mercedes not to fallen victim to the F1 hype machine that so often chews drivers and teams up, only to spit them out just as quickly.

He added: “I’m not going to sit here and over promise anything. I think what’s important is to focus on yourself and maximise the potential.

“I can confidently say we’re in a much, much stronger place than we were this time last year and the direction we’re taking for the following year’s car. I have 120% confidence in every single team member that is a part of this team.

“They’re truly extraordinary people, incredible engineers, designers, everybody within the whole organisation. They’re so motivated for that success and we have a clear direction to take. So that gives me confidence.”

With both World Championship titles wrapped up, Mercedes’ focus will be on securing P2 in the Constructors ahead of Ferrari. The gap is 28 points with five races left in the season.

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