How Mercedes has escaped its false dawn F1 curse

Mercedes is always cautious about reading too much into one-off Formula 1 results, especially when wins like Austria owe a lot to other cars hitting trouble.

Having faced the grim reality of several false dawns in the current ground-effect era, it is always fearful that a leap forward in performance proves to be a flash in the pan before it ends up struggling again soon after.

While it knows the Red Bull Ring triumph was helped by the Lando Norris/Max Verstappen collision, equally even without their crash it would have marked a third consecutive podium anyway for the squad – proving that the progress it has made since Monaco is real.

PLUS: How Russell became the Austrian GP hero as Verstappen and Norris came to blows

Such a run of form is not something that it has been able to boast about at all over the past 18 months as it has failed previously to find sustained progress with its F1 challenger.

In fact, there have been plenty of times where on-off good results gave it a wrong picture of where it stacked up – which proved costly and saw it subsequently fall back.

Nothing proved this more than its Brazilian GP triumph in 2022 when it allowed itself to believe it had finally cracked its understanding of the current ground-effect regulations, only to come crashing down again at the start of the following season.

But as Russell celebrates his and the team’s first victory since that Interlagos weekend, there is a very different mood within the team. In fact, there is a sense that the staff at its Brackley factory finally have the sense of understanding and direction of what is needed for the current cars to ensure it keeps pushing in the direction it is going now.

It is a point Mercedes boss Toto Wolff reflected on as he celebrated the Austria success and looked forward to what he felt was the moment when the team could win a race on pure pace.

“I think we are bringing upgrades now almost to every race,” he said. “The factory is running on full steam. We’ve never had this in the last 12 years that we were able to just develop, design, manufacture, bring it to the track and have the quality in the pieces. I’ve seriously never seen that pace.

“So every single…