George Russell reveals important target for crunch Mercedes F1 meeting

George Russell has pinpointed the need to understand why "we've gone backwards" as an important target for a crunch Mercedes F1 meeting.

In recent races, the W16 has slipped from being the second-best car in the field to third or fourth best as Ferrari has gained the upper hand to finish runner-up to McLaren.

Mercedes scored four podiums in the first six races of the season, but since Imola, it only has two, which came in the form of a one-three finish in Canada, Russell scooping the win as Kimi Antonelli took a maiden podium finish. 

However, in the three races since, the team has a best finish of fifth, and the usual cooler conditions which favoured the car in the ground-effects era have not aided performance with the British and Belgian GPs being run in wet and cold conditions. 

Given this sudden drop in performance, the team held a meeting at its Brackley base after the Belgian GP, with Russell sharing an important target he wanted to achieve. 

"It was pretty underwhelming to be honest, because we tend to favour the cooler conditions," he told Sky Sports F1 after his fifth-place at Spa.

"So we could have asked for better weather for us, but we've just had no pace recently, we need to sit down. 

"We have a big meeting this week with all the designers and engineers to understand the decisions we've made in recent weeks or months and why we've gone backwards."

A key figure involved is trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin, who indicated major changes could be made for Hungary this weekend. 

"Well, it depends on what extent you are talking about, but it is definitely possible for us to look at changing aspects of the car for Budapest," Shovlin told media, including RacingNews365. 

"How deep we go will depend on what parts we've got around, and there is quite a lot we have changed.

"We have the meeting with the drivers to go through some of what we've done over the year and make sure that our efforts are focused on the right things, and not just changing things for the sake of it."