"Time is getting critical now" - Mercedes believe they need to 'move forward' if they are to compete with Red Bull and Ferrari

Mercedes believe they desperately need to improve their car and “move forward” in the next two races to have any chance of remaining in the championship battle this season.

According to Andrew Shovlin, the team’s head of trackside engineering, it’s critical for Mercedes to make some progress over the Miami and Barcelona GPs. This is especially true if they want to stop Ferrari and Red Bull from building an insurmountable lead over them.

Speaking to RN365 following the Imola GP, Shovlin said:

"We need to move forward in the next two races if we are to keep the leaders within any kind of reach this year.

"We know where we are on performance right now and we know where we need to get to. However, there are a couple of major issues with the car that if we can fix, we can find a lot of that gap quite quickly, but time is getting critical now.”

While Russell showed some impressive pace in race trim at Imola, his Mercedes was still way off the pace of the Red Bulls and the Ferraris. To have any chance of challenging the frontrunners and get back to winning ways, the Silver Arrows need to urgently fix the issues that are robbing them of valuable performance.

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Mercedes laud George Russell’s impressive efforts at Imola GP

Andrew Shovlin has praised George Russell’s valiant efforts at the Imola GP, which saw the young Briton take P4 and score 12 crucial points for the team.

Despite late pressure from Valtteri Bottas, Russell held off the Finn to continue his record of finishing in the top five in every race he has driven for Mercedes in 2022.

Speaking to RN365, Shovlin said:

"A great drive by George saw us salvage some useful points for fourth place from what has otherwise been a thoroughly disappointing weekend.

"It was an impressive effort to keep Valtteri [Bottas] behind, but the understeer prevented him from being able to close down the gap to Lando [Norris], so he had to settle for fourth."

The Silver Arrows had one of the worst weekends in over 10 years at the Imola GP, with neither of their cars making it out of Q2 for the first time since 2012.

While Russell managed a stellar recovery drive across the Sprint and the main race to finish P4 on Sunday, Lewis Hamilton could barely make any progress and finished at P13.