George Russell makes ominous Australian GP admission | F1 | Sport

Formula 1 title favourite George Russell will start the new campaign off the back of what he said was the best pre-season he has ever experienced at Mercedes. The Silver Arrows had won eight constructors’ titles in a row when he joined from Williams in 2022, but the cars Mercedes have given him over the last four years have been too slow, limiting Russell to only five Grand Prix wins.

They are widely tipped to be the team to beat this year, though Russell has spent much of his pre-season downplaying the hype. But he admitted ahead of Sunday’s Melbourne curtain-raiser that he’s never seen Mercedes in a better place.

Russell said: “It has been a better pre-season than the last four years. Regardless of the stop watch, things are working out as we hope. The morale is definitely different, but this is more to do with the fact the car is performing as expected.

“The correlation is good, there are no major scares. The engine looks strong, the package looks good, so that is why morale is high. The lap times looked decent as well in the first two tests, but the rate of improvement is going to be at its steepest for the next six months.”

Russell has never before experienced the pressure of being the pre-season favourite for the drivers’ crown. The 28-year-old said he has the same outlook as Lando Norris, who shouldered that burden last year and delivered despite Max Verstappen‘s late-season charge.

He added: “[The favourite tag] does not change anything for me. No matter how this weekend goes, it is a 24-race season, it is very demanding on everybody. And a lot can change between now and Abu Dhabi.”

Russell and boss Toto Wolff both claimed after the first Bahrain test last month that Red Bull could start the new season with the best engine. And, after Verstappen’s unspectacular lap times in the second batch of testing, the Brit said he thinks Red Bull could have been hiding their true pace.

He said: “I think Red Bull looked suspiciously slow in the second test, to be honest. We had them down as arguably the quickest in the first test and, based on our numbers, they went seven-tenths slower compared to themselves in the second test.

“Whereas ourselves and Ferrari went a couple of tenths quicker with a few new upgrades to the car. So I’m struggling to wrap my head around how they’ve lost seven tenths in a week. I expect them to be very strong, to be honest. And that’s why we’re just all really intrigued to see how it pans out.”