F1 | Russell appears satisfied of the final “productive days of testing” but thinks they still need to find the way to “unlock their performance”
Mercedes' new driver George Russell appears satisfied with the final three days of pre-season testing in Sahkir. However, he believes there is still a lot of work to do before the W13 can be truly competitive.
The final day of pre-season testing at Sakhir saw the reigning Constructors Champions complete the most laps so far in Bahrain with Hamilton running a race simulation in the morning and Russell focusing on a single lap programme in the afternoon.
Beauty sleep 😴 A mighty 385 laps completed for the W13 this week. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/vMg78wBwJh
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 13, 2022
The team experimented with a range of set-up configurations to better understand the bouncing issues affecting the new generation of cars and gather as much data as possible to have them as a baseline to be worked on over the coming days as the team tries to unlock the true performance of the W13.
Formula One will be back on track in Bahrain in six days’ time for FP1 as the 2022 season gets underway.
💬 "We seem a step behind our rivals and we have a lot of work to do between now and next week to better understand the car. But there's a lot of potential in the W13 and I believe our guys are going to get to the bottom of it."
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 12, 2022
George, Lewis and Shov debrief #F1Testing 👇
Feedbacks on the W13 performance were not particularly enthusiastic, but Mercedes is not new to sandbagging their rivals. Indeed, neither Max Verstappen nor the two Ferrari drivers believe them when Mercedes claims to be ‘way behind’ their title contenders.
“It’s been a productive few days and very intriguing at the same time, with so much to learn about these 2022 cars and tyres”, claimed George Russell, the new addition to the team.
“We got through our programme with few reliability issues so great from that perspective. We were trying to get every last bit of performance out of the car and push the limits and when you’re doing that, you’re bouncing around a lot! It’s not the most comfortable but I don’t really care about comfort as long as the performance is there.
“At the moment, we seem a step behind our rivals and we have a lot of work to do between now and next week to better understand the car”
“There’s a lot of potential in the W13 and I believe our guys are going to get to the bottom of it, we just need to find a way to unlock our performance”, continued the young British talent.
