George Russell believes Mercedes is benefitting from not pursuing “big performance quick” to overcome the struggles it has endured under Formula 1’s current rules.
Mercedes entered the current ground effect regulations introduced in 2022 as the team to beat amid an unrivalled run of eight straight Constructors’ Championships.
However, the German marque has been unable to replicate that success and logged a single win since the turnover: Russell’s triumph in Sao Paulo in November 2022.
Despite retaining renewed optimism that it would make marked progress with a revamped car concept this term, Mercedes has slipped to a distant fourth in the order.
Russell thinks Mercedes has paid the price for the vast changes it has made over the past three seasons and the attempt to take shortcuts to accelerate its progress.
“I think it’s clear back two years ago that we didn’t start on the right track,” Russell admitted last week at Imola.
“And we’ve been changing the tracks a number of times over these past two seasons to try and find a path that we will be able to build upon.
“Perhaps have we changed a couple of times too many? Perhaps. We’ve been trying to find development slopes that will give us big performance quick.
“And maybe that just isn’t feasible when I think these guys have just been building upon their platform. And they’ve been doing a really great job.”
Russell reiterated that Mercedes overcompensated for the deficiencies with last season’s car, but he is optimistic it now has the platform to chase down the top three.
“We have a clear direction,” the Briton added. “I think it was obvious that we overstepped the changes we made to this car.
“We’ve gone too far in the other way. And we just need to reel it back slightly and find that happy medium.
But as we’ve said a number of times, if it was easy, everybody would be winning. And everybody would be finding loads of performance.
“And we compete with so many great teams. And we just need to try and find that step that’s going to bring us into that fight with the guys at the front.”
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