Russell protects Mercedes' 'secret': 'Not making competition any wiser'

George Russell firmly believes Mercedes is on track to be competitive again in 2023. The team would opt for a different strategy from 2022 to improve performance.

Mercedes still does not have a victory in its pocket in 2022 and that is indicative of the German team's disappointing season. Toto Wolff's men won the last eight constructors' world titles, but with the new regulations, the team has missed the mark. The W13 is not fast enough on too many circuits.

Different philosophy for Mercedes

For 2023, this year's lessons should lead to a better and completely different car. ''We have a philosophy that we're going to be trying to adopt in our development and I'm very confident that is the correct one, but equally, it doesn't mean that we can necessarily achieve it. We have a clear target we're trying to chase now,'' said Russell at Sky Sports.

Russell firmly believes his team is capable of achieving the new targets to make it a lot harder for the competition. Ferrari and especially Red Bull Racing are too often out of reach for Russell and Lewis Hamilton in 2022, making P3 seem the maximum at the constructors' standings.

Russell doesn't want to make Red Bull and Ferrari any wiser

The W13 is especially good in slow corners this year but falls short on the straight and in fast corners. Looking at the F1 calendar, there are too few circuits where Mercedes' strengths are properly expressed. So the philosophy needs to change. ''I don't want to go into too much detail because it's something that we've worked very hard on to understand and hopefully will give us an advantage into next year, so I don't want to say anything that will potentially benefit our rivals.''

Despite the down year for Mercedes, Russell did have a good debut season for the team. The young Briton was brought in as a replacement for Valtteri Bottas and is currently fourth in the world championship, 33 points ahead of his much more experienced teammate. The question is what those proportions will be if Mercedes really does compete for the world title again.