Russell surprised by Mercedes qualifying: 'Expectations exceeded'

George Russell is positively surprised by Mercedes' performance in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix. He expects to battle for third place with Ferrari and Fernando Alonso, he indicated in conversation with GPblog and others.

"After yesterday, it's a lot better than we expected," Russell said, referring to the difficult free practice sessions. "We expected to add a bit of performance overnight, but the performance we added probably exceeded expectations."

Russell further notes that the W14 already feels better than its predecessor, with which Russell and Lewis Hamilton experienced many problems in the 2022 Formula 1 season. "Ultimately the cars feeling nice to drive, so I think we're in a much better starting place than we are compared to W13 and now we can just focus on adding global performance rather than spending, you know, three-quarters of a year problem-solving."

Russell does not expect his team to be able to compete for the top positions but thinks they can fight for the final podium spot. "I think we're in a good place to fight for P3 tomorrow, probably with Ferrari and Fernando," he observes. Like Red Bull Racing and Ferrari, Mercedes has focused its tuning on the race, in which the German racing stable hopes to find something extra.