George Russell asserts that there is no finger pointing occurring at Mercedes amid its period of underwhelming performances in Formula 1.
Mercedes started the 2022 season on the back foot, when new technical regulations were introduced.
It spent much of the opening portion of the season understanding where it was being held back before playing catchup as the year went on.
Its end of season form brought it a grand prix win in Brazil through Russell, raising the expectations that it would be more competitive to start the 2023 season.
However, Red Bull has cruised to victories at the first two rounds, while Mercedes has often found itself languishing behind Aston Martin and Ferrari.
Russell later claimed that his maiden win in Sao Paulo last year led Mercedes down the wrong path regarding the car concept and its potential.
Despite its ongoing struggles, Russell says that nobody is looking for someone to blame within the team.
“I think in the conversations that have been had, I think many people accepted that these decisions weren’t the right ones.
“But nobody is pointing fingers and blaming them for making decisions that were made with the best intentions and with the info we had.
“I think when it comes to car concepts, when it comes to decisions of where, let’s say, a team of 2,000 people are going to be headed.
“It’s never one person sort of directing that: you have got your probably senior, six technical people who work together with all the knowledge we have with everybody who’s beneath them.
“The knowledge that is coming from the drivers, the work we’ve done on the simulator. And those decisions are sort of passed by and agreed upon by everybody.
“And we were aware of the concept, Lewis and I. And we did believe that this was the right direction.
“But as I said, we as a team have clearly missed something that happened over the winter. And we’re working as hard as we can to rectify that now.”
Mercedes has stated that visible changes will be coming to its car in the coming races amid a transition of the car’s concept.
At the first round of the year, team boss Toto Wolff conceded that the ‘zero sidepod’ design wouldn’t deliver a return to competitiveness.
