George Russell and Mercedes: A difficult Friday despite the XXL upgrade

One of the big questions ahead of the race weekend in Malaysia – where, exceptionally this year, the Bahrain Grand Prix is taking place – was: how well will the Mercedes upgrade perform, and how much ground will it help the Stuttgart-based team make up? Mercedes had not introduced any major innovations since May.

After the first two practice sessions on Friday, the picture is not yet entirely clear: in the first session, George Russell finished second and Kimi Antonelli fifth. In the second session, Russell managed only seventh, with Antonelli eighth. However, in the second session the teams were running long stints, so the times are of limited significance. So how does Mercedes view the situation?

Russell: Verstappen is fast

Mercedes driver George Russell had this to say about the balance of power: “At the moment, I think Verstappen looks very fast, and McLaren’s race pace also looked very strong, but you should never say never.” Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) was fastest in the first practice session and fourth in FP2. McLaren were well off the pace in the first session but then made it into the top three in the second practice session.

Russell: “In these conditions, tyre wear is enormous for everyone. And the cars are operating in a completely different performance range. So I think that, as a team, we simply haven’t quite got the car where we need it yet. We need to make some adjustments to the set-up, because we’re a bit off the pace.” And hopefully, from a Mercedes perspective, the upgrade will then come into its own?

Bradley Lord, deputy team principal at Mercedes, said: “It was probably one of our most difficult Fridays of the season so far, and the competitive situation is much more similar to that in Hungary, for example, than perhaps to last weekend’s in Baku.” Russell won convincingly in Baku. In Budapest, Lando Norris (McLaren) took the win.

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Lord: “The drivers’ feedback on the upgrades has been positive; they’re feeling more downforce in the high-speed corners and so on. We need to ensure we set up the car so that it works optimally with this update. We have no option to revert the update this weekend – so we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got and make the best of it.”