George Russell: New car is more stable in corners

After the first day of testing in Bahrain, George Russell said the new Mercedes W15 car left a positive impression on him. At today’s FIA press conference, the Mercedes driver spoke in more detail about how the new car is better than last year’s.

George Russell: “Last year’s car was really difficult to drive. Lewis and I had no confidence in her; we didn’t know how she would behave in the next corner. Now we can attack medium and high-speed corners without fear of the rear of the car being thrown off the line.

I feel like I’ve made a good step forward: the car has become more stable. Now we can really trust her, which wasn’t the case last year. We’ve seen a lot of flaws in W14 and the team has done a great job fixing them.

Now we have access to a car that mechanically holds the track. Aerodynamics engineers can therefore focus on adding downforce. In the past, attempts to increase downforce through aerodynamics only exposed the shortcomings of the chassis.

There is no doubt that we have managed to improve. However, the car may be terrible to drive, but if it is faster than everyone else, the driver will still be happy.

It was a pleasure to drive the W15 yesterday, but we know that other teams have also made good progress. So it’s too early to make any predictions at this point, but it’s clear we have a huge mountain to climb considering how far ahead of everyone else Red Bull was last year.

Let’s wait and see, but we have a much better basis for further work. The car is no longer the erratic diva it was over the past two years.”