George Russell eyeing Baku improvement but with note of caution

George Russell says that the Mercedes should be more competitive in Baku but still not where they want it to be.

The W13 has delivered plenty of headaches this season for the team in both the literal and metaphorical sense, with porpoising proving a real issue for them.

They believe in the car concept, though, and in Spain we saw that they’re making some progress with the design, though in Monaco that appeared to take a step back once more.

Even so, they’ll be hoping to be taking a positive move forwards in the coming races and Russell is hopeful that Baku will see that play out this weekend, with him expecting a better performance than the one we saw in Monaco.

However, he did caution that they would still likely be just off of the front runners in terms of pace:

“It definitely will be more suited, but I don’t think it’s going to transform our finishing position.

“At the moment, around Monaco we were six tenths behind, and into Baku, we will probably be three tenths behind the front runners we hope, for the best case.”

It’s certainly been strange seeing Mercedes struggle this season but we have seen signs of life at the likes of the Spanish Grand Prix, and they just need to replicate that form across a variety of circuits.

Monaco was always likely to be a struggle for them, too, and so they’ll hope they can go back to making some gains at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix this weekend.