Russell: Ferrari could be a strong rival for Mercedes
The new Formula 1 championship leader, George Russell, believes that Ferrari is in the fight with Mercedes and that they could have won the Australian Grand Prix with a different strategy.
Russell achieved pole position and victory in the inaugural race, surpassing his teammate, Kimi Antonelli.
Although Mercedes dominated the qualifying, Russell had to fight with Charles Leclerc for the first 12 laps, while Lewis Hamilton stayed close in the other Ferrari.
Ferrari’s challenge faded when they chose not to copy Mercedes’ decision to pit both cars during a virtual safety car on lap 12.
Leclerc and Hamilton had to settle for third and fourth place, respectively.
Russell traveled from Australia to China for the second race. He was asked about whether his former teammate referred to the controversial Mercedes engine, as Russell predicted, and how he felt about being the F1 leader for the first time in his career.
I don’t feel any difference compared to any other day here in China. Preparing as usual, doing my things as usual. I am very happy that the car is fast and reacts as we think. There is still room for improvement and that is what pleases me the most.
George Russell
“The championship doesn’t mean anything at this moment. As for Lewis, he was actually very happy and positive after the race. I think he deserved to be on the podium if the strategy had been a little different.The image shows Mercedes and Ferrari in a possible battle for F1 titles this season.
Russell added: “I think the general opinion of the two of us is that it could be quite a close fight between us and Ferrari. I don’t think everyone expected us to win the race on Sunday. My opinion is that many teams didn’t optimize qualifying.
I think we did a great job in qualifying. When I looked at the data, we were the fastest on the out laps. It was very cold.
We managed to put the tires in a very good place. We were the fastest in all the curves. We managed the energy well.
Even between Kimi and me, there was a big difference in terms of straight-line speed. With some small differences in driving style. But I think Sunday showed the true pace.
When you look at Ferrari’s race day, they were basically doing the same lap times as us. I’m not convinced we could have won the race if both had stopped. When we did, it would have been a fight.”
Regarding the question of his old team versus the new one, Hamilton seemed less convinced that the margins are narrow, but he does believe that the new rules mean that things can change very quickly.
“I think it really depends on the development,” said Hamilton. “The development rate is quite pronounced for everyone at the moment, so people will be interested to see who brings improvements in these next races. They have a big, I mean, you already saw in qualifying, I don’t know, eight tenths or something like that, and in the race I think it was between four and five tenths when they were in clean air, which is a big difference.”
So it’s going to be really interesting to see the development, we’re going to try to catch up with them, and I think we can, but I don’t know, it’s not going to be something certain.”
Leclerc also expects the difference to change from week to week, but believes Mercedes is one step ahead at the moment.
“I think the picture will remain relatively the same. In qualifying, I don’t expect us to be at their level yet. We will certainly be closer because in Melbourne we did a lot of things that we haven’t optimized and there was quite a bit of time back in that, but we are definitely not at their level.”
In the race, I think it will be closer. To have a good prediction at this time of year with a relatively small amount of knowledge about your car, we still have to understand what effect is caused by what we see on the Mercedes race tracks. In qualifying, when you also look between the cars, it’s not like last year, where you could very easily understand that this car has a big advantage.
You look between George and Kimi in the classification and there are like three tenths between the cars. There’s a lot in the driving style. There are many, many more things to analyze and it takes time.
I don’t think we still have the confidence to understand where it goes from one track to another.”
