George Russell claims Mercedes have gone backwards during F1 testing

George Russell, Mercedes, Singapore, 2025 — Photo: © IMAGO

Pre-Season Testing

George Russell claims Mercedes have gone backwards during F1 testing

Mercedes are considered favourites in 2026

Chris Deeley

Sunday 15 February 2026 19:43

George Russell has claimed that his Mercedes team may have taken a step back at Bahrain's first official pre-season test.

The Silver Arrows were the headline makers coming out of Barcelona's shakedown test last month, but the Brit warned this week that their car may have taken a step back in terms of both reliability and performance since then.

A number of figures in the paddock will be taking Russell's comments with a huge, boulder-sized grain of salt, with the prevailing sentiment among teams that Mercedes were going to some lengths to hide their true pace this week.

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Both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc have openly said as much, with the latter accusing them of hiding a 'massive amount' of their true speed. Verstappen, for his part, believes that Russell's team has something like 20 horsepower in the bag that they're yet to pull out.

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Russell: Everything worse in Bahrain

Speaking to the media after running this week, Russell claimed: “Barcelona was very smooth, and probably smoother than we actually anticipated, in terms of reliability, in terms of performance. We’ve got to Bahrain and in both regards we’ve taken a step back.”

The team were hit with their first public technical gremlins of the year, with Kimi Antonelli's running hampered on both Wednesday and Thursday.

Russell continued: “I do think this test has been a bit of a reality check for all of us. Firstly, a huge amount of chat regarding Mercedes and our power unit in the winter – all of it just speculation, because nobody knows anything at that point.

“The truth is, Red Bull in Barcelona, day one, hit the ground running, were well ahead of all of their competitors – ourselves, Ferrari and the others. Day one here in Bahrain, again, they sort knocked it out of the park. At the moment, they’re very much the team to beat.

“It’s quite straightforward when you have three days of testing in the same locations to make those improvements, but when you get to [the first round in] Melbourne and you’ve got three practice sessions, three hours of practice before qualifying, based on what we’ve seen in Barcelona and Bahrain, Red Bull are going to be ahead, so we’ve got work to do.”

F1 Mercedes George Russell