“Still struggling to understand this car”: George Russell reviews Mercedes’ W15 after lukewarm results in Saudi Arabia

George Russell recently addressed some of the issues Mercedes is facing with their new W15 F1 car.

The Brackley-based team was not quick in the first two races of the 2024 F1 season. Both their drivers mostly finished below the likes of Red Bull, Ferrari, and even McLaren.

After the 2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP, Russell told Sky Sports that the team was still struggling to understand the car. He stated that though the W15 had its moments of brilliance in Bahrain, it progressively got worse in Jeddah.

“Still struggling to understand this car, in all honesty. Because it’s shown true performance at points. At Bahrain, we were P1 and P2 in practice, straight out of the box. Here [in Jeddah] on Thursday, we were quick. And we’ve kind of got a little bit slower as the weekend progressed. So we need to understand why that is and tap into the data to understand it further,” he told Sky Sports, via formu1a.uno.

At the Saudi Arabian GP, Russell managed to finish sixth, while Lewis Hamilton was all the way down in ninth. This came after their fifth and seventh-placed finishes, respectively, in Bahrain.

Ever since the FIA brought changes to the technical regulations in 2022, Mercedes has been struggling to close the gap with the top team, Red Bull. They faced issues like porpoising, wrong car concept, seat positioning, etc.

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George Russell predicted Red Bull to be the favorite to win the 2024 F1 World Championship

After the 2024 F1 pre-season testing, George Russell speculated that Red Bull could once again be favorites to win both world titles in 2024.

As quoted by The Race, Russell feels the Austrian-British team had a brilliant winter break between 2023 and 2024, during which they developed the RB20.

“They are in such a great momentum at the moment. They started these new regulations on the front foot and they came here and have been solid ever since. So, they are definitely the favorites, definitely a step ahead of everybody else here in Bahrain. They’ve had a massive winter no doubt, but that was to be expected,” said Russell.

Russell's prediction has been correct up until now since Red Bull has completely dominated the first two races of the 2024 F1 season. In both Bahrain and Jeddah, the defending world champions had a 1-2 podium finish with Max Verstappen winning both races and Sergio Perez finishing second.