George Russell has revealed many of the changes Mercedes have made with the W16 were in the “pipeline” for some time, the team just wasn’t able to put them on the car last season.

After two years of struggling with Formula 1’s ground-effect aerodynamic cars, Mercedes made notable gains last season that were kickstarted by the first big update of the campaign in Monaco, a package that included an innovative front wing.

George Russell is ‘optimistic’ the W16 will be ‘good step’ forward

The new wing was integral in Mercedes winning three of four races from Austria to Belgium. However, overall it proved to be a season of seemingly sporadic improvements as Mercedes played catch-up in Formula 1’s in-season development race.

The team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained: “The whole thing of development in Formula 1 is fixing problems, and can you fix them quicker than your competitors. And that’s how you get to the front. If you look at when we brought our updates compared to our main competitors, we were often bringing our big package a couple of races later.”

“But if we brought it earlier,” he added, “it would be a smaller package.”

As such, Mercedes held back until such a time as they had a significant upgrade to bring to the track.

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It was a decision that meant there were several parts on the drawing board that Mercedes did not put on last year’s W15 that will be included on this year’s W16.

Russell told Sky Sports: “There have been a lot of… I wouldn’t say changes directly from last year to this year, these are things that have been in the pipeline for a long time, items that we couldn’t quite put on the car in 2024 but we’ve been working on them for a long time.

“We’re optimistic it will be a good step in the right direction. You obviously never know what your rivals are going to have done.”

Another big question that Mercedes and their rivals have to ask this season, the “intriguing” one according to Russell, is how much in-season development will be carried out on the cars.

The F1 2025 championship marks the final year of the regulations in their current format before all-new cars and engines arrive next year.

While the cars will be smaller, lighter, more agile and include active aerodynamics, the engines will adopt a 50/50 split between electric power and internal combustion and the sport has scrapped the MGU-H.

The teams were permitted to begin work on the 2026 cars on January 1st but will each have to decide how much of their resources they’ll devote to upgrading the 2025 cars during the season versus focusing on 2026.

Russell is interested to see how that impacts the traditional in-season development war.

“Throughout this year, with the thought of 2026, whether people keep developing or not is going to be quite intriguing,” he said.

Mercedes have confirmed they will launch their 2025 challenger, the W16, on February 24.

Russell believes if Mercedes give him the car to challenge, he’s ready to fight Max Verstappen for the Drivers’ Championship title.

“Absolutely,” he insisted. “I feel ready, everybody in the team is so motivated. I feel that these years have sort of been trial and error, but every time we’ve had a chance to win, we’ve won.

“And that’s what gives me the optimism that if we do have the car, we can achieve it.

“We’re working as hard as we can for it to be this year, but everybody is fully on board and it’s going to be an exciting season.”

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