George Russell has claimed Mercedes’ woes with its 2024 Formula 1 car are a consequence of having “overcompensated” to solve the issues it endured last season.
Mercedes’ underwhelming start to the current campaign continued in Miami as a pointless Sprint outing was later followed up with a fourth-row lockout in qualifying.
Russell led team-mate Lewis Hamilton but the pair wound up eight-tenths behind polesitter Max Verstappen, with the Ferraris and McLarens also ahead of Mercedes.
The Briton has urged the German marque to “accept where we are at the moment”, despite predicting that it will be able to be closer to its rivals in race trim tomorrow.
“I expect to be looking forward tomorrow, hopefully no pressure from behind,” Russell said. “But P7 and P8 we have to accept where we are at the moment.
“We are a step behind McLaren and Ferrari and a big step behind Red Bull. I think the result we showed today was the maximum.
“But I’m confident tomorrow, we will make a step forward to them.”
Mercedes introduced a much-needed upgrade package this weekend that team boss Toto Wolff had touted would be a “good step” forward when speaking in China.
But Russell said that the “stopwatch doesn’t lie” and has admitted that the squad’s desire to pursue a new car concept has seen it head too far in the other direction.
“We know that probably some of the changes we’ve made since the end of last year perhaps overcompensated with some of the development items we did,” he added.
“We have limitations with the car now, which is a totally different limitation to what we had this time 12 months ago.
“We did so much work to solve the problems. We’ve kind of gone too far in that direction. So we know we need to improve and we need to improve quickly.”
Russell is optimistic that Mercedes understands how to now address the latest hitches it has encountered but conceded that it will take time to implement remedies.
“Yeah, we definitely know how to [solve the latest problems],” he said. “I think when we look at the data, we understand why we’re in the position we are right now.
“And as I said last year, when we looked at the data, we understand why we were in that same position.
“And I think unfortunately, we’ve probably overcompensated to solve the problems of last year.
“And we’ve gone from this extreme to that extreme now and we need to sort of rewind and find ourself sort of in a halfway house.
“But when developments, when new upgrades take, you know, eight weeks to run to the car.
“You know, you learn this problem race one, race two, you know, you can’t just bring that upgrades to the next race.
“You got to put in the wind tunnel. Someone has got to design it. Someone’s got to draw it. Someone’s got to build it and then you are halfway.
“So I think that’s why it’s difficult when you’re on the backfoot to just suddenly make that progress and everybody expects it tomorrow. And we want it tomorrow. But this is the reality of F1.”
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