George Russell expects his own form to improve in 2024 after a winter away from Formula 1, following a disappointing second season at Mercedes.
Promoted for 2022 after three years at Williams, Russell duly beat teammate Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ championship, scoring seven podiums on top of a maiden victory in Brazil. However, despite Mercedes improving from third in the constructors’ standings to second this year, Russell ended the season with just two podiums to his name. Even so, the Briton doesn’t feel he has any particular areas he needs to focus on over the off-season.
“No I think just a reset ,” Russell told select media including RACER. “I think I entered the summer break and I was lacking a bit of performance, and the reset allowed me to regain that performance. And the results didn’t quite come.
“But I think it probably does all stem from Melbourne, and just missing that potential race win or podium. You feel you’re on the back foot and slightly behind in the standings, even though there’s a long way to go. You’re trying to catch up, and you’re constantly on catch-up. Whereas if you start on the front foot, you’re already in a good groove.
“You can take away so many learnings from this, but ultimately, if you’ve got a faster car, things are easier. The incident , if we’d been faster than Max , he wouldn’t have overtaken me and we wouldn’t have collided. There’s one easy way to solve some of these problems.”