George Russell reacts to Mercedes’ lack of performance: “It’s a difficult pill to swallow”

George Russell admits Mercedes' struggles this season have been a hard pill to swallow. The Mercedes driver did not have the best of races in Bahrain and neither did his teammate Lewis Hamilton. While Hamilton was able to finish the race in P5, George Russell fared worse and finished P7 in the race.

Since that race, much has been about the team's poor start to the season. Team boss Toto Wolff has talked about a complete overhaul of the car concept after Bahrain while Hamilton made some pointed comments about the team's design unit.

The 2023 F1 Saudi Arabian GP is not expected to be a good one for Mercedes either. Talking to Sky Sports, George Russell admitted that all of this was a tough pill to swallow and said:

“I think we probably overshot with the W13 in terms of the aggressiveness of the car and the bouncing that we faced. And then we probably overshot in the opposite direction with W14 and compromised too much performance with no bouncing and clearly, the lap time isn’t there to show anything."

He added:

“So of course, it’s a difficult pill to swallow for every single member of the team, and its lack of performance is definitely not through a lack of trying or commitment from anybody. But yes, some big decisions are being made and we’ll be jumping onto a slightly different path, well, already.”

George Russell explains where Mercedes went wrong with the car

George Russell explained to the media where the Mercedes car design went wrong. The driver revealed that the team was too aggressive with the design last season and appears to have overcompensated this season. He said:

"I think when you look at, let’s say, W13 we were clearly too aggressive with the car design and the bouncing, and that was our big limitation. Fast forward 12 months, and we wanted to be in a position where we’re not experiencing any of this."

He added:

"And we’ve probably equally overshot in the opposite direction, compromised too much performance, too much downforce for the lack of bouncing to learn that probably the changes that the FIA implemented over the winter solved the majority of our problems."

George Russell will be hoping for a stronger showing from Mercedes in Jeddah. However, it does look highly unlikely that the German team will turn things around on short notice.