Russell: Our job is to try to win new victories

George Russell admitted that if Mercedes had been in the fight for the world championship, the Spa disqualification would have been a much harder blow.

George Russell: “It’s funny how quickly thoughts change: during the summer holidays you don’t think about racing that much, but last Sunday evening thoughts about tyre pressures, downforce, rear springs and so on came flooding back into my head.

We certainly didn’t do well enough in Spa, which led to disqualification, but this was due to a number of circumstances, and the weight the car lost during the race exceeded our calculations.

However, I think that if we had claimed to have won the championship this year, losing so many points would have been a much more serious blow. Unfortunately, we are still far from that, but we still set ourselves the most serious tasks.

We have made very significant improvements recently, although, to be honest, our three wins in the last four races do not really reflect our form; the McLarens are a bit more competitive. Red Bull’s results are a bit unstable at the moment, but there is also no doubt about the competitiveness of this team.

Despite Mercedes’ very good results in the last few races, we don’t pay much attention to the size of our lead over our rivals. Now our main task is to understand the car as well as possible, to execute race after race and to achieve new victories.”

George was also asked to comment on the news of the appointment of Peter “Bono” Bonnington as chief race engineer at Mercedes.

“Of course Bono is an integral part of our team and has achieved a huge amount of success during his many years at Mercedes,” Russell said. – But he performed well when the team was still called Brawn GP, ​​so the news that he will remain with us is certainly good.

There have been many rumours that he could join Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, but for me personally the advantage for me is that when Bono takes a higher position, he will again become an experienced specialist who will look after our work. This will benefit the whole team.”