Mercedes driver George Russell has completed two of his three sessions in the team’s 2025 car and will be satisfied with his running up to this point.
It’s a season of change for Mercedes who have said goodbye to Lewis Hamilton and promoted George Russell into the lead driver role, with rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli brought in alongside him.
Antonelli immediately looked confident during his first run, setting the fastest time of Wednesday morning’s session that included Hamilton.
Russell was in the car on Wednesday afternoon and went quicker again, only being kept off the top of the timesheets by McLaren’s Lando Norris.
The three-time race winner was then straight back behind the wheel of the F1 W16 on Thursday morning for another long run.
On that occasion, only Hamilton trumped his best time, but the signs are encouraging for Toto Wolff’s team at this stage.
The aim for Mercedes is not only to close the gap to the teams who finished above them in the constructors’ championship last year but to better understand their car and the processes in place to design, build and test it.
For years, Mercedes haven’t fully understood why their car was struggling or thriving at certain tracks and with a new ruleset on the horizon that needs to change.
Karun Chandhok spots issue with George Russell’s steering wheel during F1 testing
Former F1 driver Karun Chandok and commentator David Croft were watching Russell’s onboard cameras when they noticed something very unusual.
Chandhok was slightly concerned and explained: “Sorry, just one thing, I’ve noticed George’s steering wheel looks a bit right-hand down.
“When he goes in a straight line, it’s not quite straight. There, look, look at the sticker on the top as a reference, it looks like right-hand down, doesn’t it?”
Croft replied: “So, is that something you can just put up with it?”
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Chandhok elaborated: “It looks like they’re doing some, you know, this is not any form of high-performance run, so it’s not gonna affect the data, the information that they’re trying to get off the flow-vis paint, for example, that’s still going to flow in the right way.
“So I think they just thought we’ll run like for now and we’ll sort it out when we get the break.”
Toto Wolff jokes that Mercedes have lost their ‘USP’ during 2025 pre-season testing
Although Mercedes finished fourth in the constructors’ championship last season, there were several races where they were unstoppable.
At Spa and in Las Vegas they were the quickest team and Russell would have won both Grand Prix had he not been disqualified in Belgium.
Asked about why Mercedes’ new car doesn’t appear to have the same advantage in the cold conditions that benefitted them last year at a dreary Bahrain track, Wolff told the press: “Well, I’m a bit worried at the moment because that should be conditions where we should be two seconds quicker than everybody else, which was the only highlight last year in terms of performance in Las Vegas, and we are not.
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“So, either we’ve remedied the problem and we are more balanced through all the climate conditions or not.
“We’ve had a laugh about it, whether we lost some of that USP. We shall see. I don’t know.”
Russell has admitted to regretting one comment he made before pre-season testing about knowing how fast the car will be within just a few laps of driving.
While that may be the case, he’s not going to know the full potential of the car with a misaligned steering wheel.
