George Russell is cautious about his and Lewis Hamilton 's chances of success at the upcoming British Grand Prix as "there doesn't seem to be any sweet spot" with the setup of the Mercedes cars.
Both racers will be cheered on more loudly than most when the Formula 1 paddock returns to Silverstone on the first weekend in July. Hamilton is adored by his home crowd for his success there and in the sport throughout his career, while Russell's talent and personality have seen him gather an army of his own fans.
The latter has enjoyed remarkable consistency this season, finishing in the top five in all nine races so far despite the team's struggle for competitiveness at times. His most recent was fourth place at the Canadian Grand Prix, while Hamilton – whose results have varied more in 2022 – stood on the podium one place ahead.
But despite those positive results, he has rarely shied away from commenting candidly about his car's issues. Asked how he believes Mercedes can perform at Silverstone, Russell said he was unable to answer as each circuit has caused fresh problems for the W13 this year.
"I'd like to think the high-speed nature should suit us slightly more, but there's no guarantees, every single track we've gone to, it's sort of thrown an unknown at us," he said. "And we're facing different issues every single race weekend. So I'd like to think we'll be more competitive, but I really don't know.
"With the overall car, we sort of solve one issue and we fall into another trap. Porpoising has been solved. But then when you run the car close to the ground, we're hitting the ground quite aggressively. There doesn't seem to be any sweet spot at the moment."
And the Briton knows that his team still has to do a lot of work on the W13 if it is to become competitive with the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari later in the season. "[Sunday's race] looked very promising at times," Russell added. "But the actual pace deficit to the front-running car was still pretty substantial.
"So even though it looked on paper to have been a bit of an improvement, we're still a long way from where we need to be. So we haven't made a huge amount of progress as yet. But we're still working as hard as we can to close the gap."
