[ 2020 ] AMG Mercedes F1 Team - Mercedes

[etusch]

OMG.... The game is on Bottas!

I believe he can not sleep whole week and he will push too hard to beat Russell

[Moore77]

It would be unfair to expect George to beat Bottas or to even be up in top 5. That doesn't lower his reputation one bit. It takes time to get adjusted to a new car in a new environment and extremely difficult prospect to achieve anything within 3 days. It would be a good opportunity for George to learn and get some valuable experience, along with points for the team. Not everyone would be lucky to have a win on switching teams like Max did, under extremely lucky circumstances. Best of Luck to George. Hope he surprises us.

[etusch]

I think he easily will be in first 3 but it is not for sure if he beats Bottas or not.

[El Scorchio]

Thrilled for Russell. Let's see what he can do.

[e30ernest]

It would be unfair to expect George to beat Bottas or to even be up in top 5. That doesn't lower his reputation one bit. It takes time to get adjusted to a new car in a new environment and extremely difficult prospect to achieve anything within 3 days. It would be a good opportunity for George to learn and get some valuable experience, along with points for the team. Not everyone would be lucky to have a win on switching teams like Max did, under extremely lucky circumstances. Best of Luck to George. Hope he surprises us.

Yes I don't expect him to beat Bottas either. It's how close he will be to Bottas that would be intriguing IMO. Leclerc was on the pace of Vettel as soon as he started last year at Ferrari if I remember correctly (he even beat Vettel in his 2nd race).

[siskue2005]

hopefull Russel will get a podium at the least this week

[siskue2005]

It would be unfair to expect George to beat Bottas or to even be up in top 5. That doesn't lower his reputation one bit. It takes time to get adjusted to a new car in a new environment and extremely difficult prospect to achieve anything within 3 days. It would be a good opportunity for George to learn and get some valuable experience, along with points for the team. Not everyone would be lucky to have a win on switching teams like Max did, under extremely lucky circumstances. Best of Luck to George. Hope he surprises us.

Yes I don't expect him to beat Bottas either. It's how close he will be to Bottas that would be intriguing IMO. Leclerc was on the pace of Vettel as soon as he started last year at Ferrari if I remember correctly (he even beat Vettel in his 2nd race).

The sakhir track is going to be the shorted ever lap in f1, with just 5 corners, so the gap will be definitely smaller.
And Leclerec did entire preseason testing before jumping in for the first race, we cant expect that from Russel

[Just_a_fan]

It would be unfair to expect George to beat Bottas or to even be up in top 5. That doesn't lower his reputation one bit. It takes time to get adjusted to a new car in a new environment and extremely difficult prospect to achieve anything within 3 days. It would be a good opportunity for George to learn and get some valuable experience, along with points for the team. Not everyone would be lucky to have a win on switching teams like Max did, under extremely lucky circumstances. Best of Luck to George. Hope he surprises us.

Agreed. It's important that he brings the car home having had a full race distance. Binning it (either alone or in a collision) wouldn't do his future career any favours. Drive the car cleanly, get a decent points finish, take a podium if the opportunity arises. No heroics required, a cool head and some considered driving is what will win him long term career opportunities.

Having said all of that, I just hope he gets a chance to race Max, that they have a good clean battle and we can all enjoy it.

[Moore77]

Having said all of that, I just hope he gets a chance to race Max, that they have a good clean battle and we can all enjoy it.

George's big concern would be to not screw up the opportunity and Max is now battle hardened and blood thirsty for another win. It would be wrong match in the current situation. I am sure the time would come for these two to go hammer and tong.

[Manoah2u]

Yeah baby Yeah, let's get aboard the Russell hype train! chochoo, i'm honestly happy for this chance, hope he's gonna have a good time and also that he's gonna shine.
And hopefully, both GP's.

Nothing against Bottas personally, but i've got bored fast with him. Lets see how they fare against eachother and i relish Prince Max V King George.

I indeed skipped that Nissany does not have SL to race, Aitken does, so that makes sense. Brit for a Brit for a Brit. Pretty funny.
Also a great chance for Jacky boi. Will be curious to see how he fares against Latifi.

Some very interesting battles this weekend.

Aitkan can show his worth against Latifi.
Fittipaldi can show his worth against Magnussen.
Russell can show his worth against Bottas, Max and probably Perez.

If he's smart, he'll do as much FP1, FP2 and FP3 laps to get to know and feel the car,
then take it relatively easy in Q1, with space to make Q1 easily, but start going to pump in laps in Q2 when there are 5 cars less to deal with,
then go all out in Q3 from the get-go after building confidence and then finally having the space by having less traffic and show his qually magic.

Will he be getting the benefit from using Bonno's experience aswell?

[Manoah2u]

Having said all of that, I just hope he gets a chance to race Max, that they have a good clean battle and we can all enjoy it.

George's big concern would be to not screw up the opportunity and Max is now battle hardened and blood thirsty for another win. It would be wrong match in the current situation. I am sure the time would come for these two to go hammer and tong.

Quite the opposite, if Russell can beat Max, that's a mental hammer to Max and the rest,
and a gigantic confidence and 'commercial' boost for Georgie boy.

Max could very well underestimate Russell and the Mercedes.
Hell, perhaps Mercedes is going to put the dials on 11 just to help out.

And let's face it, is hammer and tong even neccesary?
George has proven to be a Qualification 'beast', and one of the important factors with the Merc is to Qually in P1 or P2, as it's proven to have more difficulty to operate when in traffic, and when in clean air, that Merc goes warpspeed.

Since Max and RBR/Honda have the tendency to have less than perfect race starts, all George needs to do is make sure his grid position is in front of that of Max, or right alongside him, then make a good start (which he has been doing pretty great too), and he then only has to make sure he goes through the first few corners well and unleash all power to build a minimal 1-second gap to Max.

With the way the track is built, this is very much achievable, i would argue that this track favours the Mercedes much better than the RedBulls, the only thing that'll be an important game 'ingredient' is that i'm pretty sure there's going to be more than 1 Safety Car and VSC occurring with messy restarts throughout the field.
I'd personally expect the biggest 'dangers' are going to be the rolling restarts.

If Russell however manages to be in front of Max, then I think Max will find himself under much more threat from Bottas than anybody else. Even Sergio could be so wise to avoid messing with his presumable new employer (RBR).

To be fair, i wouldn't even be surprised if Russell manages to dominate the race qually start to finish.

I think the Renaults, Mclarens and Racing Points are going to be much more of a battle in the P2 to P6 ranges, which could really mess things up during the pitstop windows where the P1 and P2 cars could find themselves 'stranded' within or behind.

[bosyber]

I still think Russell should aim for a podium spot as the main plan, with anything else depending on how the weekend goes. Do I exclude him nailing pole? No, and it would at the same time be pretty glorious, and devastating in putting Bottas, and the team management that signed him for another year, on very serious notice, but I am not going in expecting it. Could he be Albon level behind? Well, can't really see it but who knows. Would certainly say something about how much it is car, right?

As to fighting Verstappen if he's there on pace? One has to think Russell is a bit more rusty, and certainly less experienced at that level in the car, so as a team manager I would expect him to take it when possible, but also prefer to keep the car in the race and get good points and a race at the front under his belt rather than crash out.

[Shrieker]

Excellent opportunity for Russell to prove his worth. All he's had for teammates till now have been Kubica (no disrespect) who was missing half an arm, and Latifi who has been abysmal. If George can be somewhat close to Bottas both in the qualy and the race, that'll do him a world of good. It's not realistic to expect him to beat Bottas with almost a full season's experience with the car missing.

George should watch out tho, others are very likely to hassle him real hard, knowing full well he can't afford to waste this chance with a crash.

Kudos to Mercedes too, for keeping their word as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

[etusch]

I think you are forgot he has 2 years experience of F1 and he had taste of the car earlier. So he will be fast enough until Q session and I wont be surprised if he beat Bottas. Maybe not in Q but definetly in the race

[SiLo]

He won't beat Bottas in Quali or the race as long as Bottas doesn't have a terrible weekend. If he's pretty close in both, I'd call that a major success for him. He needs a clean weekend, be a massive sponge for information and do his best to show his speed.