Russell’s Red Bull theory under Antonelli scrutiny after Mercedes experiment

George Russell had claimed that Red Bull is now “the team to beat” after back-to-back Max Verstappen victories.

Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli is not sure about that. Rather, the championship leader believes it is “mostly” a case of the Silver Arrows not yet fully exploiting its upgraded W17, a situation which he hopes will change at the upcoming United States Grand Prix.

George Russell says Red Bull top dog, Antonelli unconvinced

Verstappen picked up where he left off by winning the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. His re-found dominance continued into Singapore.

After Russell crashed out of the Sprint lead at the end of Lap 1, Verstappen cruised to victory.

The Dutchman followed that up with another P1 on Sunday, leaving the Ferraris powerless on their split strategies to stop him.

Antonelli completed the podium, while Russell went from a back-of-the-grid engine penalty to ninth.

“I think the main thing for us as a team is to try and understand how we’re going to find more performance,” Russell told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media after the Singapore Grand Prix.

He added: “The performance of Red Bull has been very impressive the last three weeks on three very different circuits and right now they are the team to beat.”

Russell’s Red Bull verdict was put to Antonelli, as he spoke alongside Verstappen and Charles Leclerc in the post-race press conference.

Is Russell right that Red Bull has become the team to beat, or is it also partly Mercedes not yet fully exploiting its upgrades, Antonelli was asked.

Mercedes carried out a Singapore GP experiment after a lacklustre debut for the upgraded W17 in Malaysia. Russell ran the old package, Antonelli new.

“I think, yes, probably mostly us not extracting the maximum out of the new package,” said Antonelli, in contrast to Russell’s belief.

“I mean, of course Red Bull has done an incredible step forward, but as well, Max has probably been more comfortable with the car and just extracting more out of it. So, it’s a combination of things. But for sure they’ve done a good step forward.

“And on our side, it’s just we’re trying to understand how to extract more potential out of it because we do see the gains, we do see what it could bring. It’s just that the window is very small at the moment where the car operates and is very sensitive to the way you drive it, the way you take a corner, the way you brake. So it reacts very differently.

“So hopefully now in Austin, we have three free practices, so we can be very open-minded with set-up and hopefully we can find a way and we can use the full potential of the package and finally see the gains.

“But I think the team did an incredible job this weekend on just putting the car in a better place and allowing me to get the confidence. And now it’s a starting point to keep working and keep extracting the potential.”

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Antonelli could mathematically seal his first world championship in Austin. He heads to the Circuit of The Americas 102 points clear of P2 Russell.

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