29/07/2025 18:20
George Russell has pinpointed the need to understand why "we've
gone backwards" as an important target for a crunch Mercedes F1
meeting. In recent races, the W16 has slipped from being the
second-best car in the field to third or fourth best as Ferrari has
gained the upper hand to finish runner-up to McLaren. Mercedes
scored four podiums in the first six races of the season, but since
Imola, it only has two, which came in the form of a one-three
finish in Canada, Russell scooping the win as Kimi Antonelli took a
maiden podium finish. However, in the three races since, the team
has a best finish of fifth, and the usual cooler conditions which
favoured the car in the ground-effects era have not aided
performance with the British and Belgian GPs being run in wet and
cold conditions. Given this sudden drop in performance, the team
held a meeting at its Brackley base after the Belgian GP, with
Russell sharing an important target he wanted to achieve. "It was
pretty underwhelming to be honest, because we tend to favour the
cooler conditions," he told Sky Sports F1 after his fifth-place at
Spa. "So we could have asked for better weather for us, but we've
just had no pace recently, we need to sit down. "We have a big
meeting this week with all the designers and engineers to
understand the decisions we've made in recent weeks or months and
why we've gone backwards." A key figure involved is trackside
engineering chief Andrew Shovlin, who indicated major changes could
be made for Hungary this weekend. "Well, it depends on what extent
you are talking about, but it is definitely possible for us to look
at changing aspects of the car for Budapest," Shovlin told media,
including RacingNews365. "How deep we go will depend on what parts
we've got around, and there is quite a lot we have changed. "We
have the meeting with the drivers to go through some of what we've
done over the year and make sure that our efforts are focused on
the right things, and not just changing things for the sake of it."
