George Russell is concerned Mercedes’ deficit to rivals Ferrari and Red Bull could grow further during today’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
Russell qualified ninth for the Bahrain Grand Prix, four places behind team mate Lewis Hamilton. Both were out-qualified by the Red Bull and Ferrari cars.
Russell said the team is lacking performance compared to its rivals because they haven’t mastered the ‘porpoising’ problem teams have encountered this year. “Naturally, the cars which are bouncing more cannot run the cars as close to the ground as they’d like, and they are missing out on performance,” he explained.
“So we don’t expect to be able to close the gap [on Sunday] to our competitors. We would absolutely love to be able to but I think that just isn’t really the case and if anything, you may just see the delta diverge.”
The team is still in the early stages of mastering the problem, said Russell. “I think we’ve made a small step, but I think we’re still a long way…