George Russell expects pace uptick for Baku compared to Monaco

Mercedes driver George Russell believes that the car should be back to Barcelona levels of pace after a dip in Monaco.

The W13 has certainly given the Silver Arrows plenty to think about this season so far, with a number of issues needing to be resolved – including porpoising most notably.

However, Spain showed that they are starting to get there with the car with it showing decent pace in qualifying and the race, though Monaco a week later underlined that there is still work to do.

This weekend, F1 is in Baku for round eight of the world championship and Mercedes are going to be hoping they can get back to making strides forwards, and Russell’s comments ahead of the weekend suggest that that might well be the case.

Indeed, speaking on Friday morning the Briton said that they’re not thinking about the dip in Monaco too much and are still working with the progress made in Barcelona, with him expecting the car to be back near that level of performance in the capital of Azerbaijan:

“We’re building off of Barcelona. Barcelona was our first race where we had this new update package on the car and we’re just constantly developing and this’ll be a good weekend to understand it further,” said Russell.

“I don’t think we’ll be right back in the fight, I think we’ll be Barcelona pace-wise, sort of not too far away but it’ll be a few more races before we start to get in that mix.”

Merc fans will certainly hope that’s the case, as that could mean they’re in the top six fight minimum this weekend.