SHANGHAI, China — F1’s new championship leader George Russell thinks Ferrari are right in the fight with Mercedes and might have won the Australian Grand Prix with a different strategy.
On paper, Russell took a comfortable pole position and victory at the opening race, both of them ahead of teammate Kimi Antonelli.
While Mercedes was on a different planet in qualifying, Russell had to battle with the fast-starting Charles Leclerc for the first 12 laps, while Lewis Hamilton lurked close in the other Ferrari.
Ferrari’s challenge fell away when they opted not to copy Mercedes’ decision to pit both cars during what had appeared to be a fortuitously timed virtual safety car on the 12th lap.
Leclerc and Hamilton had to settle for a distant third and fourth.
Russell flew from Australia to China for race two with Hamilton and he was asked on Thursday about whether his former teammate referenced Mercedes’ controversial engine, as Russell predicted he might on Sunday evening, and how he felt being F1’s points leader for the first time in his career.
“It feels no different to any other day to be honest here in China,” Russell said. “Preparing as usual, going about my business as usual. I’m most happy about the fact that the car is quick and reacting as we think. There’s still room to improve and that’s what I’m most pleased about.
“The championship means nothing at this point. As for Lewis, he was actually very happy and positive after the race. I think he deserved to be on the podium if the strategy was in a slightly different direction.
“I think the general view from the two of us is that it can be quite a close fight between ourselves and Ferrari. I don’t think everybody expected us to walk away with the race on Sunday. My view is that a lot of teams didn’t optimise qualifying.
“I think we did a really great job of qualifying. When I looked at the data, we were the quickest on the outlaps. It was really cold.
“We got the tyres in a really good place. We were the quickest in all the corners. We got the energy management right.
“Even with myself versus Kimi, there was a big difference in terms of the straight-line speed. With a few little driving style differences. But I think Sunday showed the true pace.
“When you look at Ferrari’s race day, they were basically doing the same lap times as us. I’m not convinced we could have won the race if they both pitted. When we did, it would have been a fight.”
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On the question of his former team versus his new one, Hamilton seemed less convinced the margins are slim — but does think the new rules mean things can change very quickly.
“I think it’s really dependent on development,” Hamilton said. “The development rate is pretty steep for everyone at the moment, so people are going to be interested to see who brings upgrades over these next races. They do have a big, I mean you saw in qualifying it was, I don’t know, eight tenths or something like that, and in the race I think it was between four and five tenths when they were in clear air, which is a huge gap.
“So it’s really going to be interesting to see the development, we’re going to try and catch them up, and I believe we can, but I don’t know, it’s not going to be a sure thing.”
Leclerc also expects the gap to change week to week, but thinks Mercedes are a step ahead right now.
“I think the picture will stay relatively the same. In qualifying, I don’t expect us to be at their level just yet. For sure, we’ll be closer because in Melbourne, we did many things that we haven’t optimised and there was quite a bit of lap time in that, but we are definitely not on their level.
“In the race, I think it will be closer. To have a good prediction at this time of the year with a relatively small amount of knowledge on their car, we still have to understand what effect is caused by what we see on the race traces of Mercedes. In qualifying, when you look also in between cars, it’s not like last year where you could very easily understand this car has a big advantage.
“You look between George and Kimi in qualifying and there’s like three tenths in between the cars. There’s a lot in the driving style. There are many, many more things to analyse and it takes time.
“I don’t think we are confident yet to understand where it goes from track to track.”
