George Russell: "Off the pace" Mercedes F1 car needs tweaking at Sepang

The Mercedes F1 driver finished second and seventh in the Friday practice outings at Sepang, while team-mate Antonelli was fifth and eighth

George Russell reckons he needs to make a tweak to his Mercedes Formula 1 car as he believes it is “off the pace” at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

The Mercedes driver finished second and seventh in the two Friday practice sessions, respectively 0.383s and 0.492s off pacesetters Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

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It was even worse for his championship-leading team-mate Kimi Antonelli as the dominant driver of 2026 struggled for pace by taking fifth and eighth in the Sepang outings.

This all comes on the weekend that Malaysia is returning to F1 for the first time since 2017 on behalf of Bahrain, which cannot host a round due to the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict.

In typical fashion the practice outings saw the hot and humid Southeast Asian climate play a huge role, while the threat of rain is constant despite it not yet falling.

Russell told F1 TV: “It was really cool driving this circuit, I've never driven here before - it's really an iconic place.

“So that was cool but with these conditions tyre deg is huge for everybody and the cars are operating in a very different window.

“I think as a team we just haven't got the car quite where we need it to be and we need to make some set-up adjustments as we're a bit off the pace.”

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Srinivasa Krishnan

FP1 is arguably more representative of what Mercedes can achieve though, as second practice saw neither driver set a soft tyre lap due to them making separate errors in the final sector.

So there is still more to come from the heavily-upgraded W17, which has seven updated components - mainly focused on the car floor, as well as rear suspension, corner and bodywork.

When pressed on his Friday practice pace in light of those long-awaited upgrades, Russell responded: “I'm feeling the downforce in some of the corners, but with this amount of tyre overheating and tyre degradation that kind of trumps everything.

“So we just need to get on top of that overnight. That's more of a set up rather than the upgrade itself and go from there.”

The Briton will therefore have a fight on his hands to claim a sixth pole of the 2026 season with Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari all looking strong against the championship-leading Mercedes.

“Verstappen looked very fast and the race pace of McLaren looked very quick, but never say never,” said Russell.