{"id":512597,"date":"2026-06-26T19:23:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T19:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/512597\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T19:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T19:23:18","slug":"mercedes-expect-to-have-fight-on-our-hands-in-austria-as-russell-names-rival-team-hes-really-surprised-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/512597\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes expect to have \u2018fight on our hands\u2019 in Austria as Russell names rival team he\u2019s \u2018really surprised\u2019 about"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes are braced for McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari to all potentially pose a threat as the Austrian Grand Prix weekend develops, despite their pace-setting start to the event with Kimi Antonelli on Friday.<\/p>\n

Antonelli<\/a> clocked a best time of 1m 07.014s during second practice at the Red Bull Ring, putting him a few tenths up on McLaren<\/a> rivals Oscar Piastri<\/a> and Lando Norris<\/a>, with a slightly bigger gap back to Red Bull<\/a>\u2019s Max Verstappen<\/a> and Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s Lewis Hamilton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Assessing Mercedes<\/a>\u2019 opening day, Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord expressed his view that the Silver Arrows \u201chave a fight on our hands\u201d to go on and claim pole position and victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting,\u201d said Lord of the competition. \u201cObviously after Friday in Barcelona, it looked like there was a bit of a gap back to Ferrari, yet they were right on the pace on Saturday, and very competitive on Sunday as well in the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur suspicion is that we haven\u2019t yet seen everything that they\u2019ve got to offer this weekend, and maybe they\u2019re running in a new power unit<\/a> quite conservatively today, and then we\u2019ll see a bit more what they\u2019ve got to bring tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cRed Bull look in good shape as well with their big aero update<\/a>, and as we\u2019ve seen in the last few races, particularly the hot ones, McLaren are right there too. We\u2019ve all got a fight on our hands, but that\u2019s how it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lord then offered some insight into both Antonelli and George Russell<\/a>\u2019s respective experiences at the wheel of the W17, with the latter \u2013 who lost some track time in FP2 while mechanics worked on his car \u2013 winding up some six tenths off the pace set by his team mate in sixth place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think just trying to get the balance right, basically, and tuning that,\u201d he said of Russell\u2019s day. \u201cIt felt a little bit oversteery in the low-speed, and a little bit too understeery in the high-speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome work to do, but the long runs look strong, and we know George historically has been strong here, so I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll be right there and on the pace come tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cKimi seemed comfortable straight away. He was up at the top of the timesheets pretty quickly as well. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s still more to come as they build confidence and understand just where the limit is.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know track limits can be a big topic here in Austria as well, so staying just the right side of the white lines is important, because it can be pretty costly if we don\u2019t. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s got plenty of margin to nibble into tomorrow as it comes down to the end of Qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell himself suggested that he and Mercedes were slightly \u201cflattered\u201d in FP1 due to issues for rival drivers and teams \u2013 while namechecking the squad that particularly caught his eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, FP1 was a very strong session for us both, we looked really good,\u201d said the Briton, who sits third in the Drivers\u2019 Championship<\/a>, 50 points down on leader Antonelli.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen straight out of the blocks in FP2 McLaren looking flying, to be honest. Obviously a disrupted session on my side, but their race pace and their single lap pace looked pretty decent.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his fall from second position in FP1 to sixth in FP2, he added: \u201cI think it was more everyone else had a pretty troubled session. Every time I saw on the TV screens, it was drivers in the garage with problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cLando only got out at the end, I think Lewis had some problems, Max had some problems, so I think that probably flattered our pace a bit in FP1, but things were feeling good.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said, it was a real surprise just seeing the first lap of the McLarens in FP2, right at the top, and their race pace, especially on Lando\u2019s side, looked a bit better than us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes are braced for McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari to all potentially pose a threat as the Austrian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-512597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}