Russell names Red Bull the team to beat as Mercedes struggles to unlock W17 upgrade

George Russell has identified Red Bull as Formula 1’s new benchmark following Max Verstappen’s dominant run through the Asian triple-header, while Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli cautioned that the gap partly reflects his own team’s failure to fully unlock a recent upgrade.

Verstappen finished just 0.196 seconds behind Russell in Baku before claiming convincing victories in Malaysia and Singapore — three contrasting circuits that underlined the RB22’s breadth of performance after Red Bull introduced what it described as its final major upgrade package of the season at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Mercedes’ situation has proved more complicated. The team debuted its long-awaited W17 upgrade in Malaysia, but the Sepang International Circuit’s unusually rough tarmac made it difficult to draw clear conclusions. In Singapore, the team split strategies — Russell ran the older specification while Antonelli used the new package to gather comparative data. The preliminary finding is that the upgrade does offer greater potential, but only within an extremely narrow operating window.

“The numbers say it’s performing as we expect, but obviously the lap times haven’t been that great,” Russell said after the Singapore race. “So we need to try and understand how to make that work.”

Russell recovered to ninth in Singapore despite being caught out by the timing of a virtual safety car, though he insisted the VSC misfortune was not his primary concern. “I think the main thing for us as a team is to try and understand how we’re going to find more performance, because the performance of Red Bull has been very impressive for the last three weeks on three very different circuits. Right now they are the team to beat.”

Antonelli, however, offered a more nuanced reading when asked whether he shared his team-mate’s view. The Italian rookie suggested the picture was as much about Mercedes’ own shortcomings as Red Bull’s step forward. “I think it’s probably mostly us not extracting the maximum out of the new package,” Antonelli said. “Of course, Red Bull has done an incredible step forward, and Max has probably been more comfortable with the car and just extracting more out of it. So, it’s a combination of things.”

The divergence in perspective between the two Mercedes drivers reflects the uncertainty the team still faces heading into the next phase of the season. Whether the W17 upgrade can be made to work consistently — and how quickly — will go a long way to determining whether Mercedes can mount a genuine challenge to Verstappen’s resurgent Red Bull.