George Russell admits that this 2024 season has been full of frustrations at Mercedes F1, for his teammate as well as for him.
There have certainly been a few victories, three in total, but the inconsistency of the W15 continues to weigh on morale.
So how can we evaluate this season before the last hat-trick of races, which his team will use to test things in order to prepare for 2025 and the W16 as best as possible?
“I think now that we've done almost a full season we fully understand why the car has so many ups and downs. It has a very narrow operating window and when we can tune the car to exploit that window, we have a race-winning car.”
“But when we go to different circuits and have to change the positioning of the settings, we fall completely outside our working window. It’s obviously frustrating when you know the car has this potential.”
“But I think for everyone there are these fluctuations in performance. We did a good job of capitalizing on the good races that we had, we had the pole positions when the car was capable of doing them. And ultimately we just need to create a more consistent car over 24 races.”
Lewis Hamilton will not be alongside him next year to help the team progress. He will have to deal with a young driver, Kimi Antonelli. Is this a concern for the development of the car?
“Not really. At the end of the day, for most F1 teams, you have almost 1,000 people working on building these two cars, but you only have two drivers behind the wheel.”
“And I think, let's say, in Lewis's case, in my case, Lewis has never had a louder voice.”
“The team listened to both of us equally because our opinions were extremely important. And it's the same for next year. You know, Kimi is new. He's fresh. And I'm sure that 'he will have a lot of good ideas to contribute.'
“So I'm the more experienced of the two, but we'll both have the same voice, and we'll both contribute to the development in the same way that Lewis and I did.”
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