George Russell’s days at Mercedes so far have been filled with quite a bit of struggle, as the team is having a hard time trying to keep up with Ferrari and Red Bull.

If in Bahrain Lewis Hamilton managed to step on the podium - after a last-minute double DNF forced Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez out of the race -, the weekend in Saudi Arabia was even more challenging for the silver arrows.

Hamilton started the race in P15 after failing to progress on to Q2 on Saturday’s qualifying (he went up from P16 due to Schumacher’s forced retirement) and managed to finish just in the points on Sunday.  

“I think an encouraging side is that the stint on the hards was positive. I wouldn’t say it was fast, but it was positive,” commented Wolff in a session with media including Motorlat after the race.

What complicated things for Hamilton was Mercedes late call for boxes under the Virtual, just when the Pitlane had already been closed by the race direction.

“In the end with Alonso slowing down during the lap, Ricciardo broke down in the entry and we told him to come in, but there was a double yellow with a car slowing down and one stationary, it was just an overall confusing situation,” he explained.

“He passed by and slowed down because of the confusion, that made us come out behind Magnussen and obviously then it’s game over.”

A slightly better weekend for his teammate George Russell who finished in P5.

Despite driving a solid race, the Brit still found himself a 21.932s away from Perez’s Red Bull after crossing the finishing line, making it clear that the problem lays in the W13.

A car that is not allowing him to express his full potential and battle for the top spot, something that the Team Principal is sure Russell is capable of.

“I think he does a great job, he is not given a tool to fight at the front where him and Lewis deserve to be,” he stated.

“George has proven that he has the ability to race at the front, but simply at the moment we are not providing him with the car. So I’m very happy with his performance overall.”

Certainly, the same can’t be said about the performance the car has showed so far. A lack of pace that Mercedes is still trying to assess, but in which downforce is playing an important role, as Russell explained after the race.

“I think we are not running the car where we wanted to run it and therefore it’s very difficult to really assess what the lap time deficit is if we were able to run the car lower,” added Wolff.

"I would very much hope that the gap is much closer to what we've seen today. But there are deficits everywhere."