27 March 2023 , 09:29
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George Russell insists he and Lewis Hamilton are on the same page and there is "no finger-pointing" going on behind the scenes at Mercedes.
The team's expectations are always going to be high after an eight-year streak of winning the Formula 1 constructors' championship. But, as was the case last year, the Silver Arrows are off the pace again after sticking to their guns in terms of their car philosophy.
Mercedes have already admitted that a rethink is needed and work is in progress to develop their car to make it more competitive as the season progresses. Despite mostly presenting a united front in public, there has been talk of division behind the scenes.
Hamilton was critical of the team when he claimed his input wasn't listened to during the design process of the W14, though he later said he regretted those words. But an emergency meeting was held by the team's senior leadership nonetheless.
But Russell says everybody at the team backed the big decisions made during the development of the car, including himself and his team-mate. He told reporters: "I think many people accepted that these decisions weren't the right ones.
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"But nobody is pointing fingers and blaming them for making decisions that were made with the best intentions and with the info we had. I think when it comes to car concepts, when it comes to decisions of where, let's say, a team of two thousand people are going to be heading, it's never one person directing that.
Mercedes' W14 car is less competitive than hoped (AP)"You've got your probably senior six technical people who work together with all the knowledge we have with everybody who's beneath them, the knowledge that's coming from the drivers, the work we've done on the simulator, and those decisions are sort of passed by and agreed upon by everybody.
"We were aware of the concept, Lewis and I, and we did believe that this was the right direction. But we as a team have clearly missed something that happened over the winter, and we're working as hard as we can to rectify that now."
Those efforts, however, may well be hampered by budget constraints. Team boss Toto Wolff admitted: "If you’re on the back foot, like we are at the moment, it doesn't allow you to build a second chassis. But I think our fundamental problem is not building a second chassis or throwing stuff at the car.
"It's more about a direction that we've taken that's wrong. And I think if we... When we change it now, that's going to be limited by the budget cap, but not in the way that you would expect, like we're not able to develop. We're still able to develop but it will mean we need to spend time on a new concept, on new ideas, and we need to discontinue the old one."