George Russell calls for major F1 rule change before pre-season test

Lewis Hamilton on difficult season for Mercedes in November

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George Russell has urged bosses to change F1’s pre-season testing rules with just days to go before the green light in Bahrain. Teams are allowed to run only one car during test sessions with drivers having to share time in the cockpit.

However, the Mercedes star has claimed F1’s solitary session is “not enough” after three months away from racing. He warned under the current rules drivers will get less than two days to prepare for the new year which was “too few”.

The 25-year-old called on chiefs to “compromise” with F1’s stars and allow constructors to run two machines. He said: “Personally speaking, I don’t think three days is enough.

“You’ve got to remember from a driver’s perspective, that is one-and-a-half days per driver. We were fortunate to do the [tyre] tests last week but, had we not, that would have been getting on for 12 weeks out of the car from Abu Dhabi to Bahrain.

“I think three days with two cars would probably be a good place to be, and I think that would probably be the best compromise for all of the reasons why they’re trying to limit it. But right now, one and a half days per driver I think is too few.”

F1 used to run multiple pre-season test sessions at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona. But that was scrapped in 2021 when the current three-day format in Bahrain was introduced.

It comes after fears Mercedes’ could struggle with porpoising again in 2023 after clips emerged of the team’s demonstration runs. Despite Lewis Hamilton admitting he felt “comfortable” behind the wheel, the seven-time champion’s head was spotted bouncing at Silverstone last week.

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Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott has backed up Russell’s concerns, stressing the team would not be able to iron out all of its cracks ahead of the opening race. He explained the team will have “limited mileage” to discover all of the car’s reliability woes.

Elliott commented: “These cars are now so reliable that you need more mileage than three days to really start seeing some of the issues. The second big impact is that we’ve got to use our limited time as efficiently as possible.

“We’ve got to learn as much as we can, to work out how to get the most performance out of the car and what we can learn to feed into the next developments.”

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