The German producer endured one other difficult weekend in China the place the promise of a second place within the dash with Lewis Hamilton was not adopted by way of to the primary grand prix.
Russell got here house in sixth, with Hamilton down in ninth, because the squad was as soon as once more left chasing solutions about why it can’t unlock the potential it feels there’s in its W15 automobile.
And with main arrange route modifications for each drivers after the Saturday dash failing to ship any final enchancment in potential, the staff concedes there’s nonetheless a component of thriller about what’s going on.
Staff boss Toto Wolff mentioned: “I feel the automobile is tough automobile to arrange and tough to drive, and that’s the reason you will have these oscillations in performances for my part.
“I feel the place the automobile is, and the place Lewis’s automobile was, was definitely distant from the optimum and it’s driving on a knife-edge.
“So, what’s it? That is the place we’re. For Miami we’re bringing new bits, and it is going to be fascinating to see how they will carry out on the automobile.”
Russell means that the way in which that main set-up modifications over the China weekend didn’t yield a lot distinction in efficiency factors to the truth that Mercedes may have to simply accept that the automobile is delivering all that it’s able to proper now.
“We have had two totally different set-ups this weekend, each of which produced very related lap instances and efficiency,” mentioned Russell.
“So, the work must be again on the manufacturing unit and finally in F1, the extra downforce you will have, the quicker you may go. The set-up is the cherry on the cake.”
From Russell’s perspective, Mercedes wants to maneuver away from evaluation of discovering an ideal set-up and return to the extra commonplace strategy of specializing in aggressive growth and a run of upgrades.
“I feel there isn’t any silver bullet,” he defined. “We simply have to carry on including efficiency and specializing in the fundamentals, which is within the wind tunnel and within the CFD: simply including downforce. Possibly typically it is so simple as that.”
Russell mentioned that a lot experimentation and route change had taken place all through the bottom impact period to choose what the staff has now that maybe it had reached a ceiling on what is feasible with its present gear.
“I feel we have understood sufficient thus far that we simply want so as to add downforce,” he defined. “We have modified philosophies and we have modified ideas fairly just a few instances now during the last two years.
“My private view is that it doesn’t matter what idea you are on, you simply have to have as a lot downforce as potential, and you will cope with the restrictions thereafter.
“So yeah, let’s examine in Miami. We have got some upgrades coming to the automobile. Let’s examine what we are able to do with that.”