George Russell says it would be wrong to label Mercedes' season a failure as the team has gone from strength to strength lately and currently sits second in F1's Constructor' standings.
While the battle rages behind Red Bull between Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ferrari and McLaren, the Brackley squad has progressively detached itself from the group in the last three races and now leads Aston by 51 points in the championship.
The running order reflects Mercedes slowly but surely gaining momentum as it better understands its W14 black arrow.
However, its contender is still no match for Red Bull and is unlikely to win on merit. But that does not translate into a failed season year-to-date for Mercedes as far as Russell is concerned.
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"I feel like as a team we’ve gone from strength to strength this season," Russell told the media on Thursday ahead of this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix.
"Obviously there was a lot of expectation upon us going into the season and perhaps why people are calling our season a bit of a failure.
©Mercedes
"Of course, it’s far from where we want it to be because we want to be fighting for championships, but to call P2 in the championship, 50 points ahead of P3 at the moment, a failure is far from reality.
"We know we’ve got a lot to improve. We’ve made really good progress and I think going into the second half of the season, we can be there to hopefully pick up any pieces that fall our way. But we just never know.
"I think last year we had the mentality that Singapore would be our only opportunity in the second half to win a race and when we didn’t win in Singapore, there was a bit of disappointment and there was sort of no expectations going into Brazil and we came away with the victory there.
"So, we’ll treat every race as an opportunity."
Mercedes technical director James Allison recently underscored the importance of the Brackley squad finishing second behind Red Bull in the championship.
Russell echoed Allison's comments but added that sustaining the team's upward trend in the second part of the year is Mercedes' other priority.
"We want to keep on progressing," he said. "I think as a team, we’re in a good position in the constructors’ championship – P2.
"We’ve made progress in the fight with Aston Martin, McLaren are obviously looking pretty strong. But, we want to keep on improving.
"We obviously would love to win a race this year, but Max [Verstappen] and Red Bull are really strong."
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