Russell praises Mercedes progress despite enduring ‘painful’ Las Vegas GP

George Russell was unable to replicate his 2024 dominance of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but remained positive after sealing second place this time around, claiming Mercedes has “a car that is better across 24 races”.

Russell had a somewhat lonely race in Las Vegas, lapping in second in the early stages after jumping Lando Norris, before dropping back behind the McLaren driver following the pit stop phase.

Taking the flag in third, Russell gained a position post-race after Norris was disqualified, along with his McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri, for excessive skid wear.

“I had the steering problem again from about Lap 5, the same as I did in Qualifying,” said Russell, referencing issues that impacted him during the race. “I managed to drive around this and I got used to the challenges of this problem, and the pace looked quite good in stint one.

“Then, at the start of my second stint when Max Verstappen came out of the pits, I was like ‘right, I’m going to attack now’ to see if I could take the lead, and I grained my tyres, the front-right tyre.

“I said to the team ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end on this tyre’, but they were confident considering the gap. But every lap was so painful. I was going slower, and slower, and slower, and I was like ‘this is not fun’. P3 was the maximum today, but other than Lap 1, it just wasn’t an enjoyable race.”

Mercedes had been the dominant force on the iconic streets 12 months ago, with Russell leading a 1-2 with then-team mate Lewis Hamilton, but this time around, he was over 20 seconds back from race-winner Verstappen by the flag.

Far from being discouraged by this turn in performance, Russell explained: “I think if you just take the average of this season – if you look at Singapore last year, we were terrible and we won this year, last year we were dominant in Vegas and we finished on the podium [this year].

"We’ve got a car that is better across 24 races, whereas last year, we had a car that was either exceptionally dominant or terrible.

“So we have a better car for a 24 race season. Unfortunately, we may not get as many highlights, but we get more points in a season.”