Russell highlights silver lining to Mercedes failure

George Russell has said the F1 autumn break provided Mercedes the opportunity to uncover issues with the W15 it will seek to address ahead of next season.

The British driver highlighted how the usual pace of the F1 calendar does not afford the chance to "dig deep" into a car, something that the one-off three-week schedule gap did this year.

The current campaign has proved inconsistent for the Brackley-based team. After starting the season fourth-fastest, it rose to take three victories over a four-grand prix span heading into the summer shutdown.

However, since F1 returned in late August, the eight-time constructors' champions has again found itself short of the front-running pace.

After rowing back on upgrades brought to Spa-Francorchamps, Mercedes had hoped developments introduced at the United States Grand Prix would arrest the slide in form. The Americas triple-header, however, showed it could not yet compete with McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull again.

Russell mused that the updates ported to the W15 in Austin were "effectively making two steps", but they did not have the desired effect.

The 26-year-old had targeted a return to fighting for the top four places in qualifying and podiums in races, however, over the three-round slate, Russell and team-mate Lewis Hamilton failed to finish higher than fourth.

Despite that, the two-time grand prix winner identified a silver lining to the autumn break, even if the developments delivered over the period ultimately fell short of expectations.

"Looking into next year, we've definitely uncovered a few things that we want to be changing going into next year," Russell told media including RacingNews365.

"When you're in the midst of a season, you sometimes don't have that opportunity to really dig deep into the fundamentals of the car."