George Russell claims that significant changes to Mercedes' 2023 car are on their way, with the Brackley squad working "really hard" to ramp up its development programme and improve the pace of its contender.
Mercedes has clearly taken a step forward this year compared to last season when it struggled endlessly to get to grips with its aerodynamically challenged W13 silver arrow.
But while progress has been achieved and led to a more stable machine, one that is now void of the porpoising whims that characterized last year's car, Mercedes is still not able to fight for an outright win on merit on Sundays.
©Mercedes
However, according to Russell the team is pouring its heart and soul into it, insisting that "big changes" are coming.
"I mean, I don’t read what’s been said in the news all the time, but you know, we’re here to win, we’re here to fight for victories and for the championship, and clearly we’re not in a position to do that at the moment," said Russell, quoted by Formula1.com.
"But big changes are incoming... Naturally you can’t get things brought that quickly to the car, but I think in due course, we’ll see some big changes and hopefully the lap times represent that."
Russell says he has trialed and tested the changes to Mercedes' black arrow and experienced the improvements, at least in the virtual world at Brackley.
"Yeah, I mean, we’re working really hard at the moment with these changes," he added. "I won’t give too much away, and we need to make sure they work as expected.
"But as we’ve said a number of times, we’re probably finding more gains in the past two or three weeks than we found over the whole winter by clearly developing in the wrong window – so it’s definitely heading in the right direction."
©Mercedes
Mercedes currently stands third in F1's Constructors' standings behind Red Bull and Aston Martin, the revelation of the start of 2023.
In the Drivers' championship, while Russell has outpaced Hamilton in qualifying in the first three races of the season, the young Briton's costly DNF in Australian last time out, where he was the victim of an engine failure, set him back to P7 in the standings, or three spots and 20 points behind his Mercedes teammate.
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