George Russell was pleased with Mercedes’ execution at the Australian GP, though he admits that Red Bull is still several steps ahead of the rest.
The British driver was very impressive on the streets of Albert Park, maximising his W14 machine in both qualifying and race trim – until a reliability failure forced him to retire.
Max Verstappen ultimately proved himself in a league of his own as the race evolved, overtaking Lewis Hamilton after the first red flag and managing his pace thereafter.
Russell’s ambition – and that of Mercedes – will not be quenched until the W14 can consistently fight for victories, so the first three races of the season will be deemed insufficient.
However, the Brackley-based squad has made significant progress after a concerning first race in Bahrain.
Additionally, with a relatively long break until the Baku GP, teams have an unusual opportunity to prepare additional improvements.
The bizarre nature of the 2023 schedule gives Mercedes precious time to mitigate the W14’s weaknesses and introduce updates far more quickly than they would have otherwise been able to.
Logistically, Azerbaijan now presents itself as the earliest race where F1 teams can bring updates – given its proximity to where most teams are based compared to the opening races in Bahrain, Jeddah and Australia.
For this reason, Baku will represent the beginning of a hyper-intense period of development for the F1 field – so it is in this time frame that Mercedes must start making up ground to Red Bull.
However, speaking to Sky Sports post-race in Australia, Russell made no secret about the task facing the Silver Arrows:
“Of course, they’re [Red Bull] a long way ahead of everybody.
“When they turn it up, they’re probably five, six or seven-tenths ahead of the rest.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but for now, we’ve got to take the positives [from Australia].
“Every time we’ve hit the track, we probably couldn’t have done any more.”
It has become expected for Mercedes to perform efficiently over the past few years, although the German squad has typically claimed race victories when optimising their race weekend in the hybrid era.
The situation has changed since the 2022 regulation change, though, with Red Bull establishing itself as the team to beat in Formula 1.
Mercedes has already committed to a significant overhaul of its concept to put itself back into the fight for victory – but it remains unclear how attainable this objective will be given the constraints of the budget cap.
