George Russell is quietly optimistic of Mercedes’ chances of success in this year’s Formula 1 season, hilariously concurring with Toto Wolff’s assessment its new W17 “doesn’t like like it’s a turd”.
The Brit is entering the new season as a tentative championship favourite, owing to the supposed superiority of the German marque‘s powertrain and the apparent reliability of the new machine in last week’s pre-season test in Barcelona.
Mercedes suffered by its own high standards during the ground-effect era, coming away from it with a handful of wins and no championships, having dominated the first iteration of the V6 hybrid phase of the sport.
Russell has shown a desire to go “head-to-head” with rival Max Verstappen this year, and cautiously confident that the W17 might the car that can enable this.
“Well, obviously we’ve only driven the car for three days, and it’s still very early days, but quoting Toto, it doesn’t look like it’s a turd, which is a bonus!” he joked to select media including Motorsport Week.
“And to be honest, in the early days like this, you’re kind of, you know when it could be a really bad car, and you can sort of highlight those negatives early on.”
Russell continued to reiterate that making bold statements would be premature and recognised the positive signs shown early on by rivals, notably Red Bull and its first in-house power unit, build with Ford.
“We don’t believe it is, but is it a car that can produce a world championship? It’s still way too early to see,” he said.
“And we’ve been quite surprised by what we’ve seen from some of our rivals, especially sort of on the Red Bull power unit side, that looks very impressive, considering they’re a completely new outfit, and reliable as well, so kudos to them.
“We’ve had a very reliable test, but we’ll have to wait and see if the car lives up to the expectation.”
READ MORE – George Russell issues ‘positive’ Mercedes update after strong F1 test
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