Yesterday at 09:15
George Russell has claimed only two of the four podiums he achieved
in the opening six rounds of the F1 season were "truly deserved" on
merit. The Mercedes driver started the campaign in imperious
fashion, and whilst the performance of the W16 cratered, he
maintained his strong form and is widely considered to be one of
the stars of the season so far. However, he 27-year-old believes
the cards were also falling favourably for the Brackley-based squad
early in the year. At the summer break, Russell is fourth in the F1
drivers' standings on 172 points, and was able to continue
consistently scoring even as Mercedes' pace fell away, something
rookie team-mate Kimi Antonelli could not. The issue for the
eight-time constructors' champions was twofold. First, the rear
suspension upgrade that was introduced at Imola unsettled the car,
causing it to become less stable and, as a consequence, cost its
two drivers confidence. Second, Mercedes has seldom been able to
create a car that thrives in hotter conditions throughout the
contemporary ground effects era of F1, so as climates got warmer as
F1 headed into its summer, the W16 started to struggle more. Save
for the outlier result at the Canadian Grand Prix, where Russell
won and Antonelli picked up his maiden podium, it was not until the
team rowed back on its Imola-spec upgrade that its drivers returned
to the rostrum and the points-paying places, respectively. Having
secured his sixth top-three finish of the season at the Hungarian
Grand Prix, Russell reflected on how Mercedes' ill-fated update was
not the only issue hindering the team over the first part of the
year. "Clearly there was a bit of a mishap in that, and something
not working as we anticipated," the four-time grand prix winner
told Motorsport.com . "We clearly have struggled in hot races. At
the start of the year, we were in spring, and now we're in summer;
that's another factor. "I think everything was just sort of going
our way at the start of the year, to be honest." Looking back at
the good fortune he was afforded early in the year to claim his
first four podiums, Russell assessed that only his results in China
and Bahrain were undeniably of his and Mercedes' own volition. "I
had four podiums in the first six, but probably only two of them
were truly deserved, I would say," he added. "Obviously, Melbourne
was [Oscar] Piastri going off. In Miami, we had the VSC playing
into our hands. "Then the China P3 was a fair result, and Bahrain
was a great result. That was the best race of the year, probably,
except Canada."
