George Russell warns Mercedes over development plans

George Russell has warned his Mercedes team against ‘trying anything crazy’ when it comes to their development plans for their W13 car.

The Silver Arrows have had a few teething troubles with their new 2022 car – one that Lewis Hamilton recently described as a ‘viper’ – but despite that they have still managed to pick up decent enough points with some around them suffering reliability issues and retirements.

Indeed, the damage limitation has gone well for the Mercs as they work hard on developing their car and getting it up to speed, and you would back them to eventually crack this particularly tough nut.

Speaking about said development, though, Russell has said that Mercedes must not try anything too crazy with the car as they risk doing more harm than good to their chances this season:

“We’ve got to go about the process analytically, we can’t do anything crazy,” Russell told Sky Sports.

“We want results and performance, but if we do anything too drastic, we’re going to go backwards not forwards.

“We’ve got to trust our team and the process and it’s going to take time, but we know there is so much potential in the car.

“We’re a bit overweight, lacking a bit of downforce and we know why – because of porpoising. But if we can get on top of those two things there is a lot of lap time there.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, it’s going to take a number of races.

“I think there’ll be little things, there’ll be incremental steps but we recognise that our rivals are going to be doing the same so it may not be clear to the outside world that we’ve made progress because Ferrari and Red Bull are going to be making progress as well.”

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