Mercedes | Russell's realism: "Verstappen is comfortably ahead of everyone"

You don't want to be fooled George Russel, second in yesterday's free practice Bahrain behind his teammate Lewis Hamilton. In fact, for the young Englishman, Max Verstappen will comfortably lead the Grand Prix despite the problems he had in the two sessions on Thursday, also because he showed no signs of slowing down in his race pace. Sure, he hasn't looked as dominant as he did in 2023, but opponents will still struggle to hold his own pace over an entire run. However, the W15 he is working well, and there is therefore satisfaction in the Anglo/German team's garage.

Mercedes, Russell slows down: “Let's not be fooled by free practice”

“We won't get carried away by enthusiasm after a day of testing – Russell reiterated. Our qualifying pace looked strong, we made some changes from testing and the improvement exceeded our expectations, but in the end what matters is race pace. Verstappen looks comfortably fastest, but we're up there with Ferrari, Aston Martin and McLaren, so we'll probably have a big battle ahead of us. However, we are satisfied with how our day went because the car behaves well. Now we need to understand where the main improvements came from and we will try to work on them. On Saturday night we want to fight for important positions."