Red Bull chief Christian Horner has shared his concerns about the emerging threat from Mercedes. The Silver Arrows are still a little off tussling their rivals for race wins, but they have made gradual improvements since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last month.
Since Baku, Toto Wolff ’s men have had at least one driver finish in the top three and on Sunday at the French GP, both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell shared the podium for the first time as teammates. Although Horner was "not especially" surprised by the top speed of the Mercedes cars, he remained confident the rival team was making inroads on the leaders.
"They were certainly talking up their chances coming into the weekend," Horner said after the race at Paul Ricard. "I think in the end, Max was reasonably comfortable. But you can see they’re chipping away at it, they’re getting closer." Horner then joked: "I hear Toto [Wolff] said they’re going to work throughout the summer break to improve the car, which would of course be illegal. You can see they’re getting closer and closer."
The Mercedes duo capitalised on Charles Leclerc failing to score points and outperformed Sergio Perez to finish behind race winner Max Verstappen. Hamilton then took to Twitter to laud his teammate’s performance as well as his own. "Left it all out there today and P2 is a great result! First time up there with @GeorgeRussell63 as well," he said.
"It’s so rewarding to see how far we’ve come since the beginning of the season. Still have work to do, but definitely going to enjoy this one!!!" Hamilton jumped Perez at the start, moving into third place and drove a strong race, holding off the Mexican in the early laps before edging away into a three-second lead by the time of Leclerc's crash and the safety car.
Hamilton was comfortably faster than Perez for the remainder of the race and left him to fight with Russell and Sainz for the final podium place. Russell secured the final podium spot by producing a nifty move on Perez following the end of the virtual safety car.
Russell appeared to be backing off just as the period was ending, but the 24-year-old then accelerated quickly and appeared to catch the Mexican napping as he was able to overtake him on the inside. "I had to sort of preempt it [slowing before accelerating quickly] and it can go both ways," Russell told Sky Sports F1.
"I knew I had one opportunity when the VSC was ending and if you can time it right and you carry the momentum, you can just carry that through after the VSC. I think he may have been a little bit too quick and had to brake. So he’s braking, I’m accelerating and that gave me an opportunity." After the race, Toto Wolff admitted he is proud of his team and the character they have shown during what has been a consistently challenging season.
"The biggest asset is the culture we have in the team," he said. "It is the immune system of the team, it keeps us working with the right mindset and to persist when it is difficult. The drivers are part of our culture and mindset and they squeeze the utmost out of the car. They never let go, they just never let go."
