George Russell doubts Mercedes can challenge Red Bull and Ferrari for victory in first race of 2023 F1 season
George Russell says Mercedes are unlikely to compete with Red Bull and Ferrari in season opener next weekend; Mercedes have been off the pace of reigning world champion Max Verstappen and suffered a breakdown on Friday; watch final day of testing live on Sky Sports from Saturday at 6.50am
Saturday 25 February 2023 07:02, UK
George Russell has admitted he does not expect Mercedes to be able to compete with Red Bull and Ferrari for victory at the opening race of the 2023 Formula 1 season in Bahrain next weekend.
While Mercedes appear to have cured the bouncing issues that plagued their 2022 campaign, reigning world champion Max Verstappen has looked in dominant form for Red Bull on the opening two days of testing, which is also being held at the Bahrain International Circuit.
Mercedes suffered a further blow in Friday's afternoon session, losing crucial track time after a hydraulic issue caused Russell to stop out on track, leaving Ferrari, who topped the morning session through Carlos Sainz, as Verstappen's most likely early-season challengers.
- Mercedes hit trouble with breakdown | Zhou Guanyu edges Max Verstappen
- Recap: How the second day of testing unfolded
- F1 testing: What it is and how to watch on Sky Sports
Asked before his troublesome Friday afternoon session about his expectations for the start of the season, Russell said: "You definitely head into a season believing.
"Every point of my career, I've always gone in believing, but you need to take a rational view once you get to the track you learn.
"I think we definitely believe eventually we will have a car capable of getting in that fight, whether we're going to have that next weekend in Bahrain, I think may be a bit of a stretch.
"They look very strong, they look very stable, the car is looking really strong and obviously Max is performing really well, so I think realistically it will be a stretch for next week, but there's no reason why eventually we can't get there at some point this year."
Russell delivered an impressive debut campaign with Mercedes last year despite the team's struggles and insists they are in a far better place than they were 12 months ago.
"Definitely in terms of feeling, it feels a step in the right direction but as we know in this sport, it's not all about feeling, it's ultimately about lap time," Russell said.
"I think compared to this time 12 months ago, things are running a lot smoother, obviously when we were here last year there were a lot of alarm bells ringing with the porpoising, unsure how to solve it, we were a bit lost. The car characteristics were not good.
"Reliability has been strong so far to allow us to do the test programme, for sure we've got things we need to improve with the car, but I'd say generally speaking we're roughly where we would have expected to be at this time of year."
Sainz happy with 'smooth' Ferrari | Leclerc: I don't want to look at Red Bull
Despite so far failing to match Verstappen, both Ferrari drivers expressed positive sentiments during another solid day of testing for the Italian team.
Sainz impressed by topping the morning session, before Charles Leclerc put together a solid haul of laps as the Monegasque appeared to focus more on longer running under the lights in Sakhir.
"(It's been) smooth, very smooth," said Sainz, who ended the day sixth on the timesheet.
"To be honest, I'm quite happy with how we've been able to run, the quantity of tests that we've managed to do over these first few days, exploring the limits of the setup, trying to put the car in different places and learning a lot from it, which is a target that I had from last year that I know we couldn't do, and this year so far I'm managing to do it.
"It feels like an evolution of last year. It feels very similar to drive and there hasn't been major changes going on in the car or the concept, so trying to improve the good pace that we had last year and obviously now putting our focus on our weaknesses of last year."
Leclerc, who finished second to Verstappen in last year's world championship, insisted that Ferrari must maintain focus on their own development, rather than being distracted by Red Bull's impressive early running.
The timesheet at pre-season testing must be treated with caution given the potential for teams to be running with significantly different fuel loads and engine modes, and Leclerc appeared to suggest that Red Bull could be running closer to their full potential than Ferrari.
"Of course it is our target (to beat Red Bull)," Leclerc said.
"They had a different programme than us, but again, it is not what I want to look at for now.
"We really want to focus on ourselves, try to get the data that we need as a team to be as ready as possible for the first race."
