George Russell Not Confident of Bahrain GP Win - "Bit of a Stretch"

Russell thinks the team will be competitive, but not until later in the 2023 season.

George Russell has stated that it will be challenging for Mercedes to compete for the race victory at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix next week.

The team is hoping to improve on its form from the previous year, which saw it slip down the rankings. Despite only winning one Grand Prix during the campaign, Mercedes made steady gains throughout the season.

This year, the team has had a successful pre-season test so far and hasn't experienced any issues with porpoising, which hindered its early-season pace last year.

However, Russell believes that Red Bull's speed may be too much for Mercedes to match in Bahrain. Although the team is in a much better position than it was 12 months ago, Red Bull remains a formidable opponent that will be tough to beat. Russell explained:

“You definitely head into the season believing. Every point of my career, I’ve always gone in believing that you need to take a rational view once you get to the track and you learn.

“I think we definitely believe eventually we will have a car capable of getting into that fight. Whether we’re going to have that next weekend in Bahrain, I think may be a bit of a stretch.

“They look very strong, they look very stable – the car’s looking really strong and obviously Max’s performing really well. So I think realistically it will be a stretch for next week.

“But there’s no reason why eventually we can’t get there at some point this year. We’ve always seen the strength of Mercedes and their development rate. So definitely the belief is there.”

The British driver continued:

“In terms of feeling, it feels a step in the right direction. But as we know in the sport, it’s not all about feeling – it is ultimately about lap time.

“I think comparing to this time 12 months ago, things are running a lot smoother. Obviously when we were here last year, there were a lot of alarm bells ringing with the porpoising, unsure how to solve it.

“We were a bit lost – the car characteristics were not good. Certainly, I think things have been running much smoother.

“Reliability has been strong so far to allow us to do the test programme. For sure, we’ve got things we need to improve with the car, but I would say, generally speaking, we’re roughly where we would have expected to be at this time of year.”