George Russell: Mercedes may have to “sacrifice” 2023 in order to “get a car that can fight”

Mercedes are not in a good place right now, and George Russell thinks they may have to "sacrifice" part of or the entirity of 2023 to get competitive again.

George Russell: Mercedes may have to “sacrifice” 2023 in order to “get a car that can fight”

George Russell

After eight seasons of dominating Formula 1, and with all but one drivers’ title being won by a Mercedes driver, the Silver Arrows were put onto the back foot instantly in 2022. Already in the first race, it became clear that they were not going to be dominating anything in 2022. Instead, they had a large task on their hand to get back to being ‘competitive’ again. At the start of the season, they were squarely third-best.

All credit to them – they made progress in 2022, especially with the porpoising/bouncing issue which was their Achilles’ heel. But even apart from that, they were nowhere near the pace of Red Bull, except for one weekend in Sao Paulo, when George Russell led a 1-2 finish. While they caught up to Ferrari in the second half of the season, it was too little too late. They eventually finished P3 in the championship, but there was hope they would make further progress over the winter. There was a lot of hubbub for a three-way title fight.

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Safe to say, that hasn’t really materialized. If anything, they’re maybe the fourth-best team now. Red Bull continue to dominate, but Aston Martin, at least in Bahrain, were definitely in the mix. It remains to be seen if they can keep this performance everywhere, but the signs are positive. Ferrari are a bit of a wild card and are still suffering from some issues. But they are still better off than Mercedes. The Silver Arrows also look like they want to ditch the ‘zeropods’ car concept now.

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Devising/developing a new one will definitely take some time. In such a situation, Russell thinks Mercedes might have to shift focus to 2024 as soon as possible. He said as per Crash.net: “We’re here to win and we obviously want to optimise every single result. But if you give me a choice between fighting and having a chance to win races whenever that is, versus slow progress and never having that chance, you obviously choose taking those victories.”

Read More: Red Bull will win every race in the 2023 F1 season: George Russell

George Russell admits Mercedes “are a long way behind”

George Russell
Mercedes driver George Russell

Red Bull look supreme right now. It may be too early to tell, but the team that seem closest to them right now are Aston Martin, and then Ferrari. Mercedes, as mentioned before, look fourth-best. That’s clearly not where they want to be. The German team wants to win titles, and in their current state, that doesn’t look possible in 2023.

George Russell acknowledges that Mercedes “are a long way behind”. So, he thinks they may need to “sacrifice” a part of the season. He said: “So if we’ve got to sacrifice some races or part of a season to give ourselves a chance to get a car that can fight, whether it’s the second half of the season or even if it’s looking towards next year, maybe that’s what we’re going to have to do because clearly we are a long way behind.”

It’ll be interesting to see how it goes for them in Jeddah. There were earlier rumors that they had a ‘Plan B’ car concept in waiting, if their zeropods car concept does not work out. Lewis Hamilton denied that, but now, the concept has clearly failed, and the team seem to have admitted defeat. Toto Wolff admitted that the team needs to switch focus, but to what?

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