George Russell has declared that the Mercedes Formula 1 team can’t afford to “kid ourselves” over the substantial deficit to Red Bull following the Chinese Grand Prix.
Mercedes sustained a promising start to the weekend when Lewis Hamilton capitalised on wet weather and battles behind to clinch second place in the Sprint outing.
However, a return to drier conditions for the remaining sessions saw Mercedes regress down the order, with Hamilton recovering from a Q1 exit to finish in ninth place.
Meanwhile, Russell fronted the German marque’s hopes, but he qualified eighth and trailed home sixth behind both Red Bull and Ferrari cars, along with Lando Norris.
The Briton classified 38.7 seconds adrift from race winner Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, despite the Safety Car interrupting proceedings as late as Lap 30 out of 57.
“The fact is, Red Bull is still a long way ahead of everybody,” Russell cited.
“And I think it was probably only in the Sprint race that we really saw their true potential [with] Verstappen pulling a second on everybody comfortably.
“We shouldn’t kid ourselves. We’ve got a lot of work that we need to do to close that gap with them and get in the fight with Ferrari and Lando.”
Russell had been opportunistic at the start to overtake both Ferrari drivers as Charles Leclerc sought to prevent Carlos Sainz from going round his outside at Turn 1.
However, Leclerc would overtake the Mercedes with ease prior to the pit-stop phase and then lost out to Sainz when he switched to a two-stop against Ferrari’s one.
Nevertheless, Russell is adamant that he filtered back to the position that is representative of how competitive the Mercedes W15 car is until it introduces upgrades.
“Probably the highlight was the first lap and getting ahead of the Ferraris,” Russell said.
“But I think P6 is a fair result and a fair representation of where we are as a team right now.
“It’s been a good weekend having this [sprint] format, to be able to try different things between the two races.
“Both races, the performance was very similar. So we just need to go back to the factory, keep working on the basics, which is putting more downforce on the car.”
