George Russell hails ‘mega’ results for Mercedes as young Brit rises to surprise second in championship

George Russell took third place for Mercedes in Sunday’s Australian GP, with Lewis Hamilton just behind him in fourth; Russell now sits second in the drivers’ championship after three races

George Russell hailed Mercedes’ strong results in the Australian Grand Prix, but knows they must keep pushing if this is to be the start of something for the team after their early-season struggles.

The 24-year-old finished third in Melbourne with team-mate Lewis Hamilton just behind him in fourth, securing 27 points for Mercedes to move them up to second in the Constructors Championship.

Russell’s haul of 15 points helped put him second in the drivers’ standings after three races too and while he admitted it was unexpected after the difficulties the team had experienced in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the British racer hopes there is more to come.

“Someone told me and I didn’t believe them,” Russell told Sky Sports. “It’s pretty crazy to think, but this is a championship based on results and not necessarily on pace.

“We know if we want to keep that position, we needed to find more performance in the car…but it’s going to take a lot of time. But, for the time being, let’s keep capitalising.

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Sergio Perez overtakes George Russell for third position of the Australian GP

“We’ve got to be proud about this because we’re sitting P2 in both championships and this weekend we were the fifth-fastest team.

“We were slower than McLaren and Alpine, Ferrari and Red Bull, yet we’ve come away with P3 and P4, which is pretty mega.”

Russell believes Mercedes are well aware of the areas they need to improve the W13, with the first European race of the year in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix just two weeks away.

However, he insists they will be taking a methodical approach to solving those issues and is in no doubt there is still plenty of promise in the 2022 car.

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Lewis Hamilton was left pleased with Mercedes’ progress over the weekend, with himself and George Russell finishing fourth and third respectively

“We’ve got to go about the process analytically, we can’t do anything crazy,” Russell said. “We want results and performance, but if we do anything too drastic, we’re going to go backwards not forwards.

“We’ve got to trust our team and the process and it’s going to take time, but we know there is so much potential in the car. We’re a bit overweight, lacking a bit of downforce and we know why – because of porpoising.

“But if we can get on top of those two things there is a lot of lap time there.”

Russell also admitted “there’s nothing substantial in the pipeline anytime soon”.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, it’s going to take a number of races,” he added. “I think there’ll be little things, there’ll be incremental steps but we recognise that our rivals are going to be doing the same so it may not be clear to the outside world that we’ve made progress because Ferrari and Red Bull are going to be making progress as well.”