George Russell believes that Red Bull is now “the team to beat” as the Formula 1 World Championship enters its final stages.
The Brit has suffered a season of wretched luck and an expected title challenge from Mercedes, Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
As a result, Russell is now 102 behind his young Italian partner, who can wrap up the title at the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas next week.
Antonelli has not had things his own way lately either, with Mercedes’ new package unable to keep up with some of its rivals.
As a result, a rejuvenated Red Bull have capitalised on proceedings, and Max Verstappen has taken wins in the previous two races, with dominant performances in both Malaysia and Singapore.
It mirrors last year’s title run-in at this stage, where the Dutchman mounted a sensational comeback to come within a whisker of an unlikely fifth world title.
And whilst Verstappen and Red Bull may be a bit too far off this time, Russell believes that the Milton Keynes-based squad is now the benchmark, with the Silver Arrows needing to understand where its upgrades have left it trailing them.
“I think the main thing for us as a team is to try and understand how we’re going to find more performance because the performance of Red Bull has been very impressive the last three weeks on three very different circuits and, right now, they are the team to beat,” he said after the Singapore Grand Prix.
“The goal right now is we need to understand how to get more out of this package.
“Kimi ran it, the numbers say it’s performing as we expect, but obviously the lap times haven’t been that great, so we need to try and understand how to make that work.”
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