Mercedes Possibly Closer To Red Bull As Russell Hints 'Good Gains' Over Winter Break
F1Monday, 25 December 2023 at 05:00
Mercedes Formula One driver George Russell hinted his team has made "some good gains" already at the beginning of the winter break.
The winter break and the start of the 2024 season will be hugely important for the Mercedes F1 team as it will now be determined whether Silver Arrows will have a chance to compete for the title in 2024 and 2025.
During the winter break of 2025, most of the teams will already want to have most of their focus shifted toward the 2026 cars with significant changes in regulations.
George Russell reflected on how Mercedes made a mistake during the last winter break when the German team decided to pursue the same concept direction as it did in 2022. He told the media:
"Last year's was a trickier car to drive. We made some big improvements but what has caught us out this year has stemmed from the winter development."
In the first race of the 2023 season, Mercedes cars crossed the line more than 30 seconds after leading Red Bull cars, which exposed the team's lack of pace.
"We took the wrong direction. We made some mistakes, and that was evident as soon as we hit the track in Bahrain. Going into our third year now, I'm confident we're not going to make those same mistakes."
Russell believes the team learned from its mistakes and going into 2024, Mercedes plans to significantly change their 2023 car in an attempt to close the large gap to Red Bull.
Toto Wolff mentioned the numbers from simulations seem positive, which hints that Mercedes might have found quite a bit of pace already two months ahead of the season's start.
Russell confirmed the team principal's words when he said the team is seeing "good gains" already. However, all the teams might be seeing similar progress, and the real winter will be based on who can make the biggest step forward. Russell added:
"We've got some good gains over this winter we're finding at the moment. But maybe it's all relative and we don't know what our rivals are going to bring."
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