Russell hoping qualifying gains haven’t hurt Mercedes race pace

George Russell admits he is surprised to have a top-three starting position for the Bahrain Grand Prix, but is hoping the team's improved qualifying performance hasn’t come to the detriment of its race-length form.

Mercedes appeared more competitive on longer runs than low fuel during the pre-season test in Bahrain last week, and arrived at the opening race aiming to find the best balance between the two. Russell says a trip back to the team’s headquarters to drive on the simulator between the test and race helped identify improvements, but he’s not sure what that will mean for how competitive Mercedes is on Saturday night.

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“I think after testing last week, we wouldn’t have expected to be qualifying third; and then yesterday driving, we made a lot of setup changes over the course of the weekend,” Russell said. “Lewis [Hamilton] and I were back at the factory, the team have been doing a really great job to find these small improvements. And we were fastest in FP2, Lewis and I P1 and P2, which caught us by surprise.

“But as we saw, it was so close out there. If you take Max [Verstappen] out of the equation, I think it was two-tenths between P2 and P8 or something. And I don’t think we’ve seen F1 like this for a long, long time. So we’re only dreaming and wishing that was fighting for pole position and victory. And I think we’re going to have a great battle on our hands for the next spot.

“I think what we saw in testing was our qualifying pace being a little bit offset, and our race pace probably being the next best to Max. Now we’ve improved the qualifying pace, we hope it hasn’t hindered our race pace."

Russell noted that the unusual weather conditions further obscure the pecking order.

“It’s uncharacteristically cold here in Bahrain at the moment, I think tomorrow is going to be about 16 degrees (C, 61F) by the time we go to the race. We’re normally talking 30s or mid-30s (86-95 F) here. So there’s a lot of unexpected things to come. The soft tire is performing well around this circuit, and the race, maybe people do two sets of the softs, two sets of the hard, a medium. But it’s the first race of the season and think we’re all just excited to get going.”

Russell doesn’t believe the cooler conditions helped Mercedes be more competitive in qualifying, with the team generally struggling to get heat into its tires in the past.

“No, I’d probably say the opposite to be honest," he said. "We historically have always struggled when the temperatures have been a little bit cooler, and that was always the case last year. But we know that with this W15 car, it’s a totally different beast, a car that we’re much happier with and probably the lessons we’ve learned over the last two years, we need to put aside and go in with a totally open mind.

“Time will tell when we go to the future races, but I’m feeling really happy in the car. I think the race is going to be really close with Charles, the Ferraris, with Checo [Perez] tomorrow. And we can see what we can do about Max, but right now, he’s doing an incredible job.”