George Russell won the first Grand Prix of the year last Sunday. However, the driver also saw his team ‘underperforming in some areas’. Especially the race starts could be improved according to Russell – who has set his sights on a title battle in both championships: ‘We were lucky the start didn’t go worse’.
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A pole position on Saturday, followed by a win on Sunday in Australia. The new season couldn’t have started much better for George Russell. Yet it felt to the Brit as if his team Mercedes also ‘underperformed’ in some areas at the Melbourne circuit. “It mostly feels like just another Grand Prix victory,” the brand-new race winner told the media present in Australia. “We’ve only had one race of a very long season. Of course, I want to fight for race wins every weekend, but the most important thing is to also fight for a world championship. That’s what we’ve been working so hard for.”
According to Russell, there is therefore still plenty of work to do at Mercedes. “If we want to compete for the championships, we have to take everything to an even higher level,” the driver added. “There were still quite a few areas where we underperformed, especially the race start.” Russell was already overtaken by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc at the start on Sunday in Melbourne. “But also charging the battery in the right way. We were lucky the start didn’t go worse.”
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‘Working more strategically’
The Mercedes driver believes that the opening race was just a taste of how strategically drivers must drive the Formula 1 cars from now on. “There are certainly more opportunities and you have to work more strategically,” he said. “I think on a circuit like this, with four straights, you really have to distribute the energy well. Suppose you have a hundred percent battery, then you have to distribute that over four straights. No team distributes that energy equally over the straights. If you use your overtake mode, your boost button, you overtake the driver on one straight and then he overtakes you again. So it was risky for both of us (Russell and Leclerc, ed.), but I hope you enjoyed it.”
Questions from Hamilton
The competitiveness of the Silver Arrows in Melbourne has naturally not gone unnoticed in the rest of the paddock either. Lewis Hamilton wondered after qualifying whether the engine of his former employer was entirely legal. Russell was already preparing for questions from the seven-time world champion after the race, with whom he is flying to the next race in Shanghai. “I’m flying with Lewis, so I’m sure I’ll hear things like: ‘Your engine is so good, your compression ratio is illegal’, and so on,” he told the media. “So yeah, I think I’ll just go to sleep early. Or I’ll just say ‘shut up and focus on your own business’,” Russell joked.
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