Russell: Brazil win led Mercedes 'down the wrong path'

George Russell believes his dominant win in Brazil last November wrongly comforted Mercedes in its idea that it should carry the concept of its 2022 car into 2023.

After months of struggles marked by Mercedes' inability to get a consistent grip on the chronic ground effect porpoising issues of its W13 silver arrow, the team finally made some progress in the back half of the 2022 season.

In Brazil, Russell dominated proceedings, winning Saturday's sprint event and then enjoying a lights-to-flag victory on Sunday.

For 2023, Mercedes opted to stick with the questionable zero sidepod concept introduced on its W13 car, while evolving its design according to the hard lessons that were learned during its troubled campaign.

But in Bahrain, Mercedes' performance fell significantly short of expectations, a disappointment that led to team boss Toto Wolff to recognize that the concept of its car was fundamentally flawed.

In hindsight, Russell points to his success at Interlagos as an event that convinced Mercedes that it was on the right path, but which in reality led the team down a rabbit hole.

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"Yeah, perhaps Brazil did lead us down a bit of a wrong path, because we did feel like we were improving as a team, that we were going in the right direction," Russell said on Thursday in Jeddah.

"And that needs some analysis as well, because we did improve throughout last year, there's no two ways about it.

"Especially towards the end of the year, we truly thought we were onto something, and the W14 was probably a more extreme version of the car we had at the end of last year.

"But clearly, others have gone in different directions. We've gone further in that direction, and it wasn't the right one."

Mercedes is now attacking its problems head-on and the team has scheduled updates and likely a revamped sidepod design for its W14 for the coming weeks and months.

Russell believes the Brackley squad has a clear understanding of the direction it needs to follow, although Brazil lingers as a reminder that there can never be 100 per cent certainty.

"We're pretty sure of the direction we need to go down," the Briton said.

"I think there's never any 100 per cent certainty because, if I'm being honest, sat here after Brazil, I would have said, 'I'm 100 per cent certain the path we're on is the right path'.

"And all of you in the room would have probably believed it as well, looking at the progression we've made.

"So something's changed over the winter, the FIA have changed the rules to the floor. We probably haven't captured that in the way that others have.

"We've overlooked this, and we're not where we want to be, so there's never 100 per cent certainty."

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