George Russell says he and Lewis Hamilton feel a bit more confident behind the wheel and the Mercedes W15 is already an improvement over last year.
The new regulations surprised Mercedes when they were having problems with the W13 and subsequent W14. They showed glimpses of performance, but overall things didn’t work out for him in 2024 as he was forced to change his concept for W15.
After only a few days of testing, Russell is already feeling a little better than his predecessor. He explains that this is a step in the right direction and a good foundation to build on. “Back in the car, he was very happy to drive the W15 for the first time,” he said.
“This is a step in the right direction, but there’s no denying that our competitors have also done a really great job.” With the performance Red Bull showed last year, we know we have a mountain to climb. I am. Overcoming this gap was a huge challenge for everyone.
“But the car definitely feels good, but ultimately it comes down to lap times. I’m still not sure where everyone is at odds. But Red Bull seems to have done a really great job again. And they made us our favorite,” concluded Russell, who answered in the affirmative when asked if the car had solved his balance problems.
The previous car was famously referred to as the “Diva” by drivers, but Russell points out that it was no longer a Diva. “You can tell right from the start if the car has been improved and if it’s good to drive,” Russell continued. “And it’s definitely progress. There’s no doubt about that.
“But I might be driving the worst car, but as long as I’m faster than everyone else, I’ll be happy.” So it was definitely fun to drive. The car felt good, but we know the other teams have taken good steps. And it’s obviously too early to say that at this point.
“We’ve definitely been able to build a much better platform and we’re not as diva as we were the last two years.” This car was really hard to drive last year. Lewis and I weren’t sure about it. It felt like every inch of me was being eaten into. I couldn’t attack mid-to-high speed corners or high-speed corners without the rear end spinning out.
“And we felt like we took a really good step forward in terms of the consistency of the car. We can trust this a lot more than we used to, and that was a big focus last year. We found a lot of flaws in W14, but the team did a great job fixing them.
“And now that we have a car where we can mechanically account for aerodynamics, we can focus on building downforce based on that.” Whereas before, no matter what you did with aerodynamics, , at its root was aerodynamics. “The race car had a problem and it took us a while to figure it out and fix it,” Russell summed up.
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This is Toto Wolff, in charge of the transparent investigation into the Christian Horner case.
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