Russell admits Mercedes outside set-up window again at Mexico City practice

George Russell admitted Mercedes has again failed to find the optimum set-up window for its upgraded W17, after Friday practice at the Mexico Grand Prix left the championship-leading team with unresolved balance issues at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Russell finished third in FP2, just a tenth behind Ferrari pacesetter Charles Leclerc, but said the result flattered the car’s true state. “I think still not fully on top of the new package,” he said. “We see there’s some balance limitations we have that we’re struggling to overcome.”

Mercedes introduced the updated W17 in Malaysia, where it was beaten by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. A similar story followed in Singapore. Team-mate Kimi Antonelli broke that run by winning from pole in Austin, but Russell has taken a DNF, a ninth and an eighth across the same three rounds. He believes both drivers are currently on the wrong side of the upgrade’s narrow operating window. “I would say currently for Kimi and I, we’re probably more outside the window, similar to what we saw in Malaysia, than inside the window like Kimi achieved in Austin. But hopefully overnight we can get it back there.”

Russell had identified Ferrari as the pre-weekend favourite, pointing to the SF-26’s smaller turbo as a particular advantage in the thin air of Mexico City, where turbos work harder and turbo lag is a more significant factor. When asked where the Mercedes needs to improve, he was direct: “The through-corner balance isn’t where we want it and the car isn’t quite as together as we’d like it.”

Deputy team principal Bradley Lord struck a measured tone, describing it as a “solid” rather than spectacular day and noting the specific engineering challenges the circuit presents. “There’s a lot of challenges here with PU cooling, with brake cooling, with boost management with these turbos, now that we don’t have an MGU-H to help us out,” he said. “So this is a tricky place to get everything right.”

Mercedes will draw some comfort from Austin, where Leclerc also led both Friday sessions before Antonelli dominated the race weekend. Lord said the team still has data analysis to complete before settling on its set-up direction for qualifying and the race.