George Russell: Lewis and I were aware of the concept and thought it was OK

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Mercedes entered the new season badly, and no one has faith that this team can win the title. In an interview with crash.net, George Russell confirmed that he and Lewis Hamilton were aware of the concept, however... “We were aware of the concept, Lewis and I.

We did believe that this was the right direction,” Russell said, as quoted by crash.net “But we, as a team, have clearly missed something that happened over the winter and we’re working hard to rectify that now”.

George Russell confirmed that there is no culprit in this story. The Mercedes team consists of a large number of people, and it is obvious that everyone has a share in these kinds of mistakes. “The conversations that have been had, many people accepted that these decisions weren’t the right ones.

But nobody is pointing fingers and blaming them for making decisions that were made with the best intentions and the info that we had. When it comes to car concepts, when it comes to decisions of where a team of 2000 people are going to be heading, it’s never one person directing that." Every decision must be supported by the drivers.

“You’ve got probably six senior technical people who work together, with everybody who is beneath them, the knowledge that’s coming from the drivers, the work we’ve done on the simulator and those decisions are passed by and agreed upon by everybody”.

Predictions

The FIA brought changes that affected many things. It's hard to predict what Mercedes will be like during the season and whether they can change fundamental things, but according to everything, Red Bull will be the main favorite, while Mercedes could be the 3rd or 4th favorite.

However, it is too early for such predictions. “We’re pretty sure of the direction we need to go down,” Russell continued. “There’s never 100 percent certainty because, if I’m being honest, sat here after Brazil, I would have said I’m 100 percent certain the path we’re on is the right path and all of you in the room would have probably believed it looking at the progress we’ve made.

Something has changed over the winter. The FIA have changed the rules with the floor. We probably haven’t captured that in the way others have, we’ve overlooked this and we’re not where we want to be. We know a change of concept doesn’t come without risks.

We all feel like we’ve got enough knowledge and information to say ‘we weren’t on the right track’ so the targets we set over the winter weren’t the right ones and we need to change lanes as soon as possible.

Those decisions have already been made and we’ve already started working towards them as of probably Tuesday last week”.