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2024 Mercedes concept won’t be so rushed - Russell
George Russell believes Mercedes will be in a better place in 2024 because its car concept will not be as rushed in development as last season’s was.
Mercedes attempted a zero-sidepod design that it felt would bring significant aerodynamic benefits, but struggled to make it work in 2022. With Russell winning in Brazil late that year, the concept was continued for the following season but Mercedes soon tried to change its approach and Russell says he’s expecting next year’s car to be far more competitive, given the amount of time it has been developed for.
“The reason why I’m more confident going into this break is that we’ve been working on the new concept for a long time and there’s been so much due diligence gone into that concept,” Russell said. “Whereas I think last year it was all a little bit rushed.
“We didn’t have all the information to hand -- we may have jumped to a couple of conclusions without thoroughly going through the consequences. We learned when the car hit the ground this year that we made a step forward in some regards but it came with a lot of baggage and we hadn’t taken that into consideration.
“So I think we’ve done a great job to truly understand what we need. We’ve obviously had a further 12 months’ experience to further understand the car and what brings the performance.”
After Mercedes’ first winless year since 2011, Russell says the team was in a position where it couldn’t turn its season around without a brand-new car, but he’s wary of predicting how close to Red Bull it could be next year.
“I think last year we put all our eggs in one basket and that wasn’t a basket that provided the performance we were expecting, so the fact is we’ve got to close a huge gap. The Red Bull dominance this year is probably the greatest -- I think statistically it is the most dominant car ever -- so we’ve all got a huge task on our hands but I’m going into next year with an open mind.
“I don’t think anyone’s expecting either us, McLaren, Aston Martin or Ferrari to make that step straight away, but definitely confident we won’t fall into some of the same traps we did this year.”
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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