In the build up to London’s glamorous F175 event, teams spoke about what to expect from the 2025 F1 season. Mercedes now has George Russell leading the team and the British racer was asked for his thoughts on how close the season will be. As well as this, new team leader of the silver arrows, Russell revealed the “significant change” for Mercedes in this year’s challenger the W16.
How different is the Mercedes W16 to last year’s challenger according to Russell?
Mercedes started 2024 on the back foot but Russell was still able to claim 2 Grand Prix victories. Even with teammate Lewis Hamilton achieving the same feat, the team would finish fourth in the F1 Constructors’ Championship. With this in mind, Russell was asked in London last week how different the W16 is to last year’s challenger.
“I think it’s going to be a significant change this year, to be honest,” came the reply from the 27-year-old. “Take every year, we’ve uncovered a problem, we’ve solved it, and it’s created a new one. And we’ve probably been a lot more disciplined with every change that we’ve made and been more thorough than ever in terms of the simulator running, just to ensure we’re not going to fall into a new trap.”
Russell went on to say Mercedes has made a reasonable step with the W16 so far but was keen to point out that “obviously you have no idea what everyone else is doing.”
Russell expects “an interesting season”
Mercedes started 2024 slowly – having been winless in 2023. However, the second half of the season saw the field tighten up. Due to the fact this is the final season before the regulations change, Russell expects “an interesting season” when it comes to how teams deploy their resources between 2025 and 2026.
“When you look at how dominant McLaren were in the second half of last year, without a doubt they’re favourites going into this year, and when people had their strong weekends, McLaren was still there or thereabouts. I think we only had one off-weekend in probably the whole of 2024, but I think why it’s going to be so interesting is whoever continues to develop will probably win the championship, but you’ll pay the price in 2026.
“So, teams who come out of the blocks and it’s a close battle, they might continue to develop, but we also saw it in 2021 I think, with Lewis [Hamilton] and Max [Verstappen], Mercedes stopped developing, and somehow they just fine-tuned the car and the set-up, and found massive performance in the second half of the year, just by unlocking the set-up a little bit more, so I think naturally always in that final year of the regs it becomes closer, but I still expect McLaren to be right at the forefront.”
A change in Russell’s approach?
Russell starts the 2025 season as the team leader following Hamilton swapping a silver arrow for a prancing horse at Ferrari. However, Russell was quick to point out that being his seventh year in the pinnacle of motorsport he would have already been expecting a change in the approach from himself even if Hamilton had remained with the team.
“To be honest, I think even if the line-up stayed the same this year, going into this season, it’s my fourth year with Mercedes, it’s my seventh year in F1, I feel last year was probably my strongest season ever in Formula 1, and I feel I’m just getting stronger year on year.
“So, as I said, even if things stayed the same, I felt a huge amount of support from the team, but equally the team gave me that support when I joined in ’22. Now with Kimi [Antonelli] alongside, Kimi’s a super-fast driver, super motivated. Of course, naturally for any driver in their first year, there’s a lot to learn, but I’m sure it’s going to be a good season together.”
A good step forward for Mercedes?
Testing in Bahrain starts this week and Russell explained how long it will take him to know whether he has a competitive package or not. The British said that within five laps he would know whether he is in for a good season or not.
He also used recent years as a reference point saying: “we’ve known within the first five laps of the last couple of years that we wouldn’t be fighting for the championship, or at least we knew we wouldn’t be fighting at the beginning of the season.”
Russell says that Mercedes have been more robust this season but F1 is hoping to have its closest championship in decades before the 2026 reset. Mercedes’ new front man also explained how all teams know the limitations that they have had for the last three years.
“If we bring the performance that we expect, it should be a good step forward, but we’ve seen it with many other teams, they bring an upgrade, and it doesn’t work,” said Russell. “So, there’s never guarantees, but as a team we obviously went through such a lull throughout 2023, not winning a race.”
Russell concluded by saying how there has been a big restructure change. James Allison returned to Mercedes and took the role of technical director. He feels the impact of that will be seen a bit this year. As much as one eye is on the future, he is hopeful for a positive season.
“Obviously, ’26 is a big one, but still, I’m optimistic that we can have a decent season.”
