George Russell names one team Mercedes are not ‘capable of beating’ at the start of the 2025 F1 season

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Mercedes heads into the 2025 Formula 1 season looking to improve their fortunes after three years of struggling with the current generation of ground-effect cars.

The team won four races last season between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, but still faced inconsistency with their package.

Mercedes W15 would suffer dramatically from swings in performance on race weekends, which the team attributed to changes in track temperature and climactic conditions overnight.

They came out of Bahrain F1 pre-season testing with an optimistic outlook, but with the caveat that the conditions were unseasonably cold which gave them a tough reading on where they were.

When speaking to BBC about their chances for the 2025 season, Russell believes there is one team they will struggle to beat in the opening stages of the year.

George Russell says Mercedes is not capable of beating McLaren

McLaren left pre-season testing with everyone thinking they were the team to beat, with Lando Norris setting an impressive race run on the second day that put them miles ahead of the competition.

It is difficult to get a proper read on how far ahead they are exactly due to varying fuel loads and engine modes, but Helmut Marko believes McLaren is at least 0.3s ahead of Red Bull on race pace.

Russell expects it will be nearly impossible for Mercedes to have a car that is capable of beating them when they turn up to the first race in Melbourne.

“I don’t think either of us right now have a car that potentially is capable of beating the McLaren,” said Russell.

“McLaren, without doubt, look by far the strongest. Especially their race pace looks pretty impressive.”

Martin Brundle tips Max Verstappen as the title favourite

Despite McLaren looking the best in testing, Martin Brundle has named Max Verstappen as his favourite to take the title in 2025.

Brundle thinks because Verstappen is now the clear number one at Red Bull and starts the year as the defending champion that it makes him the clear favourite, however, the Milton Keynes outfit did not have a smooth test.

Red Bull has made ‘drastic’ changes to the floor of their RB21 in a bid to improve the handling problems Verstappen reported, which were visible during some of pre-season testing in Bahrain.

Karun Chandhok has backed Lando Norris for the title in 2025 simply because of his performance in the final race of the season at Abu Dhabi, which he dominated to take their first Constructors’ title since 1998.