George Russell believes that his inconsistent results across the 2023 Formula 1 campaign disguised the marked improvement in pace he made compared to last season.
Having spent three years with Williams, Russell was promoted to Mercedes for 2022 and outscored veteran team-mate Lewis Hamilton in their debut season together.
The Briton also scored the team’s sole win at the end of what transpired to be a trying season that brought an end to the German marque’s unprecedented run of dominance.
However, Russell only recorded two podium finishes the past season to languish eighth in the Drivers’ Championship, a sizeable 59 points behind Hamilton in third position.
Russell, who calculated he’d lost “over 60 points” earlier in the season, reiterates that 2023 represented a year of “missed opportunities” on his side of the garage.
“It’s been a very, very strange season,” Russell reflected. “It’s been a season where we’ve had a lot of pace at times, but never achieved the results that I felt were deserved, or were possible. So we definitely need to try and understand why that was.
“There’s been a huge amount of missed opportunities, in many regards. It really hasn’t been a smooth season.
“But I think when everything’s flowing, when everything’s working, right, luck tends to be on your side.
“But when, you know, you’re on the backfoot, you tend to have bad luck. I’m not one for believing in luck. I think you make your own luck. So we just need to be faster. And Lady Luck will be with us.”
The 25-year-old’s most high-profile mistake arrived in Singapore when he crashed out from third position on the final lap of the race in his pursuit to overhaul Lando Norris.
But Russell contends that he made progress in his second season with Mercedes which was concealed by the failure to convert his strong pace into more consistent results.
“It’s definitely something I’m going to look at over the winter, because the results were so smooth-flowing last year, I think we finished in the top five more than any other driver,” he noted.
“And this year, I feel that I’ve upped my game in my quali pace and upped my game in my race pace. And we’ve definitely been on the back foot.
“But we definitely have more competition this year, with McLaren joining the fight in the second half, Aston [Martin] being there at the start of the season.”
Despite a mid-season change of car concept helping it to secure second place behind Red Bull, Mercedes ended the season without a single race win for the first time since 2011.
And having lagged 451 points behind the reigning champions, Mercedes is pursuing a new philosophy with its W15 F1 challenger as it endeavours to return to title contention.
“I think the task for everybody is massive. We’re all trying to catch up to the most dominant car in F1 history,” Russell accepted.
“So that’s no short task, and everybody’s going to have to come together, really focused, really put everything into it and time will tell.
“But I think we’re going into this winter in a much better place than we were 12 months ago and two years ago. So we hope we’re not going to stumble over anything. But as I said, time will tell.”
