Red Bull express doubts over George Russell's pace ahead of Mercedes debut
RED BULL have expressed doubts over George Russell's pace ahead of his first F1 season with Mercedes
George Russell joins Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes
Red Bull have questioned George Russell’s race pace ahead of the new season. The Briton is now a member of the Mercedes team after spending three years at Williams.
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He impressed on multiple occasions, as he regularly extracted the best from the car and reached the second session of qualifying several times.
The 23-year-old secured his best ever F1 finish of second place at the rain-affected Belgian Grand Prix last June.
He replaced Valtteri Bottas at the silver arrows, who is now driving for Alfa Romeo.
As he prepares for the 2022 campaign with his new team, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko is unsure whether Russell will be able to consistently rise to the challenge of competing for race wins and whether he has the speed to do so.
"Now let's see what Mr Russell will do at Mercedes and whether the praise he has received in advance is justified," he told Autorevue. "I want to see that first.
JUST IN: George Russell's 'eye-opening' verdict on first Mercedes factory trip ahead of car launch
"There's no discussion in qualifying, he's sensational there but if you look at his race speed, he wasn't far ahead of [then Williams team-mate Nicholas] Latifi."
The opening race of the 2022 season will not mark Russell’s first ever Grand Prix with Mercedes.
The Briton raced for Mercedes at the 2020 Sakhir GP as a replacement for Hamilton who had tested positive for Covid-19.
Russell took early control from the start and led most of the way, but with 20 laps remaining, Mercedes team mechanics fitted Bottas' front tyres on Russell's car, causing him to have to re-pit on the next lap to correct the error.
He then suffered a slow puncture ten laps before the finish and was forced to pit again, and only managed to finish in ninth place.
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Despite the agonising series of events, Russell says he learnt some valuable lessons that day.
“It wasn’t just the Mercedes experience, but there were other experiences as well, and dealing with and bouncing back from disappointment is part of life and part of competitive sport,” he told crashnet.com
"You will always have disappointing race weekends, you’ll have failures, you’ll have success.
"But if you don’t bounce back from those disappointments, you are only going to compromise yourself and your team for the remaining races.
“So accepting those disappointments, learning from it, and equally just moving on and going from there.”
The youngster visited the Mercedes factory for the first time recently and addressed staff where he admitted it had been an "eye-opening" experience.
"Hello and firstly thank you everyone for the warm welcome," Russell said in a video published by Mercedes.
"It's my first time here at Brixworth so it's been pretty special to see what goes on behind the scenes which I think quite often you don't appreciate what goes into creating this incredible machine.
"When you arrive at the track, you see the end product but you don't necessarily see all the hard work that goes into making it. So this was eye-opening for me."
