George Russell believes he can join the fight for this season’s Formula One world championship but has said his Mercedes team are unlikely to match Red Bull in the opening race of the campaign.
During the second day of pre-season testing in Bahrain the British driver said last year’s champion, Max Verstappen, and his Red Bull team were in fearsome form but also that Mercedes would bring their car up to speed with a formidable development programme. When asked if he thought he could take the title, the 25-year-old was unequivocal.
“I definitely head into the season believing I can,” he said. “At every point of my career I have gone in believing but you need to take a rational view once you get to the track.”
Russell, who took his debut win and Mercedes’ only victory of the season in 2022, was confident this year’s car was in a far more promising position than last season’s which was well off the pace, but noted that he did not expect to be challenging at the first round next weekend at the Sakhir circuit.
“We definitely believe that eventually we will have a car capable of getting into that [title] fight,” he said. “But Red Bull are looking very strong, very stable, and obviously Max is performing really well so realistically it will be a stretch for us next week.
“But there is no reason why we cannot get there eventually at some point this year. We have always seen in the past the strength of Mercedes’ development rate, so the belief is there.”
Verstappen was quickest in both sessions on the first test day and on Friday followed it by being second fastest in a Red Bull which is displaying the same ominously strong form it carried through to the end of 2022, when the team claimed 17 wins from 22 races. Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu topped the timesheets with Fernando Alonso in third for Aston Martin, while Russell lost time in the second session with a hydraulic problem.
However Russell, now in his fifth season in F1 and his second with Mercedes, remained satisfied that the team were in a position to feel confident in the car, in stark contrast to last year where it was immediately clear there were major issues.
“When we were here last year there were a lot of alarm bells ringing with the porpoising. We were unsure how to solve it, we were lost, and the car characteristics were not good,” he said. “But it has been smoother here, and reliability has been strong so that has allowed us to do the test programme.
“It’s no secret when you’re watching the onboards and videos that we are struggling a little bit with the balance but it’s a balance that is probably easier to solve than we had last year. So even though it’s still a limitation, I think it’s a good problem to have.”
