George Russell says Ferrari and McLaren are the early teams to beat in F1

George Russell has said that Ferrari and McLaren look like the early teams to beat this season in Formula 1, though it is still very early days to be predicting who is going to be strong in 2022.

The first week of F1 testing comes to a close today and it has been Ferrari and McLaren that have topped the timesheets so far, though testing is not always the most accurate representation of the running order heading into a new season.

Even so, it’s clear that the Ferrari and McLaren cars are looking pretty competitive from what we have seen, and that is something George Russell would agree with.

“Some teams are looking pretty fast – a red team and an orange team, in particular, look very competitive,” Russell said.

“They seem to have things well under control and are on top of everything. They look very strong on low fuel and high fuel and with the tyre management.

“Who knows? We all know we’re on different programmes but we definitely know from the average of all the different runs that we are behind them at the moment.

“A world championship is not won in two days in Barcelona winter testing but it’s certainly been an intriguing two days.”

Scuderia driver Charles Leclerc had this to say meanwhile: “I enjoyed it. It’s interesting to finally be able to push a bit more the car and understand how different a driving style we need to have.

“A positive day, we have done many laps and slowly we get to understand the car and push it a bit more.

“In the high-speed [corners] it is feeling quite good. In the low speed, you feel a bit more the weight of the car, especially in braking and the last sector but overall the feeling is not too bad.”