Mercedes’ George Russell has commented on rival McLaren’s dominant 2025 season so far, stating that mistakes from the championship leaders have benefitted Mercedes’ positioning in the standings and its positive result at the 2025 F1 Bahrain GP.
McLaren has dominated the early part of the season, with three out of four races being won by either Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris. Russell earned a triumphant result at the 2025 F1 Bahrain GP, where he finished P2, splitting the two papaya cars for a spot on the podium.
However, Russell believes that Mercedes’ P2 position in the constructors’ standings is thanks mostly to McLaren’s far-from-perfect races so far. Mercedes, as well as other teams like Red Bull, has been able to reap the benefits of penalties and errors that have marred the Woking-based outfit’s 2025 F1 season.
Piastri unbeatable in Bahrain
Russell highlighted the 2025 F1 Bahrain GP as an example of Mercedes’ lack of competitiveness against McLaren. Despite recording a strong P2 finish, Piastri was unbeatable, claiming the win after a dominant performance saw him lead the race from lights-out to chequered flag.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the 2025 Saudi Arabian GP, Russell admitted that the race was far from simple for him, due to a series of failures on his W16:
“It was very challenging to be honest. The car was falling apart and I was having all these different switch settings being thrown at me. The brakes, with this BBW [brake-by-wire] failure, they were very inconsistent.
“One corner the brakes were working properly, the next corner the pedal was three times as long in going to the floor, and I just didn’t know what I was going to get.“
He continued: “And then obviously with Lando breathing down my neck, I don’t want to give up the position too easily. So it wasn’t straightforward, but I’m very proud of the performance.”
Though the weekend was not as perfect as Mercedes might have wanted, Russell pointed out that the team’s performance in Bahrain was enough to dispel any major concerns about its 2025 contender:
“I think Bahrain was a really positive weekend for us because the first three races were all relatively similar, with a bit more high speed, very smooth tarmacs, very cold races.
“Bahrain was the outlier. We all knew that McLaren was going to take a huge step forward and they clearly showed how competitive they were. Oscar [Piastri] just drove away into the distance. So, for me and for us to be ahead of a McLaren was a huge result.”
Rear wing clampdown in Barcelona to bring about major changes
While it’s obvious McLaren has a serious advantage when it comes to its car, regulation changes set to come into force in Barcelona may have some severe effects on the current standings.
From the 2025 F1 Spanish GP, new technical directives will come into place, clamping down on the flexibility of the rear wings allowed on the F1 cars. The use of these wings, especially by McLaren, has been a controversial topic in recent months, with some believing it to be the reason behind the team’s rapid pace.
Russell, it appears, is among those who attribute McLaren’s dominance to its contentious rear wing. While speaking to the media ahead of the 2025 F1 Saudi Arabian GP, Russell stated that he does not expect the championship battle to shift much until the new regulations come into play:
“That’s obviously where McLaren have excelled, so until that race I don’t really see the pecking order shifting.
“That [Barcelona] will be a decisive weekend to see whether they take a step backwards and the pack closes up.”
McLaren domination will likely continue after Barcelona
Regulation changes aside, the Mercedes driver acknowledged that McLaren still has a clear edge this season even without the use of the flexi-wing. According to Russell, Woking-based outfit seems to have a more potent understanding of tyre strategy than any other team on the grid:
“Clearly they’re doing something pretty spectacular with the tyres,” he said. “We saw in FP3 last week, they were a second quicker than everybody else. That’s unheard of.
“I expect tracks, like in Bahrain, maybe Barcelona, high tyre [degradation], Budapest, Singapore, Zandvoort, these types of circuits, we could imagine they’re going to be the best. Maybe when we go to Vegas it wouldn’t be the case for them, and we can sneak in a victory. But the car is exceptionally solid right now from them.”
Russell: McLaren’s shortcomings have benefitted other teams
McLaren’s advantage has not achieved quite the same effect as previous showings of dominance from other teams. For example, during the 2023 season, Max Verstappen was regularly taking the chequered flag with a healthy gap between himself and the next-best driver – but the same can’t be said about Piastri or Norris.
Russell claims that the McLaren has been capable of producing 1-2 results for every race this season, but driver errors have allowed others to reap the benefits:
“We are finding ourselves in a position that we’re 40 points behind McLaren in the championship through probably mistakes of theirs, as opposed to pure car performance. You could argue that that car was capable of finishing 1-2 in every race so far this year. Obviously Max has won a race, we’ve had P2, and we’re sort of in that fight.
“But I can’t imagine these little mistakes are going to continue for 24 races.”
Speaking about the 2025 F1 Bahrain GP, he stated that many things “went against” McLaren which cost driver Lando Norris a better result:
“I think, without his [Norris’s] little penalties and obviously the overtake with Lewis – he gave the place back – there’s a lot of things that went against them [McLaren] that cost them, probably, the P2.”
However, instead of relying on driver mistakes and regulation changes to put up a fight against McLaren, Russell implied that Mercedes must continue to improve its car as McLaren did last season:
“In terms of where we are versus McLaren, it’s much closer than McLaren were to Red Bull [last season] but I do believe Red Bull probably had some things… It was as much Red Bull falling back to McLaren as it was McLaren developing throughout that season.”
