George Russell believes Mercedes has to find solutions if it wishes to compete with Red Bull and Ferrari at Formula 1’s season-opening round next weekend.
World Champion Max Verstappen finished pre-season testing in Bahrain, venue for the upcoming opener, at the top of the timesheets.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was second while Russell finished fourth overall on the final day of action.
Lewis Hamilton outlined earlier on Saturday that he did not believe Mercedes was in a position to contend for victory at the start of the new season.
Such thoughts were echoed by Russell following his stint in the W13.
“It’s definitely bouncing around from within, it’s not the comfiest in all honesty, but I don’t really care about comfort if the performance is there,” Russell said about the W13’s porpoising during testing.
“But at the moment the performance isn’t there, we do seem a step behind our rivals, and we do have a lot of work to do between now and next week to understand [it], because in every condition the Red Bull and Ferrari seem a step ahead of us.”
Russell suggested that neither Red Bull or Ferrari were “exceptional” but that Mercedes is “probably not as competitive as we’d like.
“It’s pretty clear where we’re limited, you’ve only got to watch the videos and you see us bouncing a lot, it’s not putting the car in the right window,” he said.
“The team are working incredibly hard to try and find solutions for this, we’ve yet to find one, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to find one ahead of next week or later in the season, this is a long game, I do believe the performance is there somewhere, we’ve just got to find it.”
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