Mercedes currently sits second in the teams’ standings, 256 points behind dominant leader Red Bull, but 51 ahead of Aston Martin – despite only claiming five podiums so far compared to the green team’s six.
Aston had been Red Bull’s closest challenger for much of the first half of the current campaign but has since fallen behind Mercedes, which has been able to score consistently even as it, Ferrari and McLaren have all had spells as Red Bull’s chief chaser at recent events.
The points gap between Mercedes and Aston remained tight until the Austrian race, but it ballooned in the three races before the summer break as the latter’s form dipped due to mistakes made on its car design development path and the former worked through its decision to drastically alter its Monaco sidepod alterations.
“I feel like as a team we’ve gone from strength to strength this season,” Russell said in the pre-event press conference for this weekend’s 2023 Dutch Grand Prix.
“Obviously there was a lot of expectation upon us going into the season and perhaps why people are calling our season a bit of a failure.
“Of course, it’s far from where we want it to be because we want to be fighting for championships, but to call P2 in the championship, 50 points ahead of P3 at the moment, a failure is far from reality.
“We know we’ve got a lot to improve. We’ve made really good progress and I think going into the second half of the season, we can be there to hopefully pick up any pieces that fall our way. But we just never know.
Source: Autosport