Despite building a lot of hype around their 2023 car by not changing their sidepod concept, Mercedes failed to show any impact in the season opener in Bahrain. After finishing last season as the third-best team, neither Lewis Hamilton nor George Russell could pose much of a problem for Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. Meanwhile, Red Bull continued their dominant run, sealing the 1-2 steps on the podium. The early signs have caught Russell off-guard, and the Briton seems to have given up already.

Max Verstappen started the race from the front and never gave anybody a chance to take that away from him. Sergio Perez did not have as good a start as his teammate did. However, after fighting several battles throughout the race, he delivered the best result the team could have asked of him.

Watching all that brilliance unfold once again in front of his eyes once again after last year, Russell wondered if Red Bull was even beatable. Speaking post-race, as quoted by Motorsport Turkiye, he said, “I don’t think anyone is going to fight them this year, and I don’t even expect them to win. I bet they’ll win every race this season.” [Translated using Google]

“I think they will win every race. Given their performance, I don’t think anyone will challenge them. This weekend their speed looks weaker than they did in testing, which was a little weird. But right now, things are easy and they can do whatever they want.”

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George also talked about how the W14 (Mercedes’ 2023 car) lacked ample downforce, despite being the car that extracted the maximum in comparison to others last year.

What George Russell feels Mercedes need to do in order to challenge for the top spot again

Last year, FIA introduced the concept of ground-effect cars which allowed teams to extract more downforce from under the floor of the cars. Mercedes went a little overboard with the concept, resulting in their car bouncing violently off of the track. To tackle that problem, this year, they dialed down on the concept a bit but that, according to Russell, has proved to be counter-productive.

He told, “I think at the moment the only positive conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the car has no serious issues other than a lack of downforce. As silly as it sounds, if you compare it to this time last year, it’s probably one of the easiest problems to fix.”

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Do you think George is correct in his assessment that Red Bull will remain unbeaten throughout the year? Or can the likes of Fernando Alonso, Charles Leclerc, or Lewis Hamilton prove to be a threat to their dominance?