Which team does George Russell expect to be less competitive at Miami?

Mercedes driver George Russell mentioned that despite Ferrari's upturn in pace at the Azerbaijan GP, he doesn't believe that they will be as quick as Baku in Miami next week.

The Prancing Horses took pole position twice in Baku with two podiums courtesy of Charles Leclerc. His teammate Carlos Sainz also finished in the Top-5 in both the Sprint and main race. Russell, however, had a mixed weekend as he finished P4 in the Sprint and P8 in the main race.

Speaking to ViaPlay, George Russell said:

"Even if I made a good restart, it would have been P6 or P7, it is far from where we want to be. So, a lot of work to be done. Not too sure what Miami will bring. I don't think Ferrari will be quite as quick relatively speaking as they were this weekend, I might be wrong."

"Looking back on this weekend, the car was not in its perfect window. Same for everybody, it is a challenge but I think we probably got the set-up in a different window than it needed to be."

"I'm a little bit disappointed with myself today" - George Russell

The Briton admitted that he wasn't entirely happy with his performance in the main race in Baku and wanted to extract more points from it. He said, as per F1.com:

"I'm a little bit disappointed with myself today. I made a really good start and got in a decent position. I made a good move on Stroll to get past him into the pit lane but I then made a mess of the restart. I was defending from Lance and almost ran into the back of Fernando (Alonso). I then ran wide and got my tires dirty. Ultimately that's why both Lance and Lewis got past. From there, it was line astern."

He continued:

"I'll take the extra point for the fastest lap but the only reason we had that opportunity was because we were in a bad position. It was close pace-wise between ourselves, Ferrari, and Aston Martin and small differences can make a big change in terms of results. Whether we finish P4 or P8 though, it's far from first so we've got a lot of work to do."

It will be fascinating to see if both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are closer to their rivals and Red Bull in Miami next week.