George Russell is expecting a difficult period for Mercedes in the Formula 1 season but Andrew Shovline has looked to provide the driver and teammate Lewis Hamilton with some hope
Mercedes are hoping to prove George Russell wrong and to boost the chances of Lewis Hamilton and his teammate competing in upcoming Formula 1 races.
The British pairing finished sixth and eighth in the Miami Grand Prix standings leaving Russell frustrated he was not more competitive. The 26-year-old driver is not expecting to become a race-winner any time soon.
Following the race in Miami, he said: “Right now, we don’t have things right and need to make changes quickly. We do have a few things coming in the short-term but nothing that is going to transform us into race-winners.
“So it is going to be painful for a few weeks. I think we have to accept that we are the fourth fastest team. The lap times and the championship don’t lie, this is where we are and I think we’re fighting for the P5-P8 region week in, week out.”
Nevertheless, Mercedes are hoping to soon see the fruits of their labour emerge on the track. After advancing an update to arrive across Miami and at Imola later in May, they hope to compete with other constructors launching their own improvements.
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin is looking towards a marked development across the next four races after gaining a clearer picture of the car in recent efforts.
“We managed to pull forward about half of our update kit to Miami and then the other half is going to arrive in Imola,” he said. “And we are working hard on the future races to try and bring developments to them as well. Did it work as expected? Yes, it all looks like it is delivering the performance that we were hoping for from the floor.
“The issue at the moment is everyone else is developing their cars, so you saw McLaren with a big package and they look to have moved forward and also the handling issues that the drivers are having to battle with are making it hard to really see all that performance as a straight sort of step forward.
“What we tend to find is that the car from session to session can behave quite differently and until we get on top of that, we are always going to blunt the benefit that we can get from these type of updates. But after the last few races, we have got now a very clear idea of what we need to do to the car to get it handling a bit more easily for the drivers, making sure it goes where they want it to go when they are on those important qualifying laps. And we have also got quite a good sort of thread of updates that will be coming over the next three or four races. A lot of hard work is going on, but hopefully we will start to see the fruits of that soon.”
