Mercedes made an ‘unusual’ statement about George Russell in official team podcast

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Mercedes directly addressed social media ‘chatter’ about George Russell in the latest episode of their official podcast.

Russell trails teammate Kimi Antonelli by 50 points after the first seven races, having been seen as the firm title favourite when he won the season opener in Australia.

Russell has felt as if the racing gods are against him this year, most notably in Canada when he retired from the lead, but Antonelli has surprisingly had the edge on pace in most weekends.

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Mercedes address Kimi Antonelli ‘favouritism’ talk on their podcast

One theory circulating on social media is that Mercedes have developed the car to suit Antonelli, rather than Russell.

In an interview during the Monaco weekend, Russell said Antonelli’s driving style was more tailored to the W17, though he did have success in Barcelona qualifying with a back-to-basics approach.

Mercedes’ social media posts have also come under scrutiny, with Antonelli featuring more heavily than Russell lately.

On the latest episode of the Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show, host Steph Wentworth asked technical director James Allison for his response to the bias allegations. As noted by Motorsport.com, this was an ‘unusual’ step and clearly a deliberate editorial decision – normally teams would ignore such conjecture.

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Wentworth said: “There’s been a lot of chatter, a lot of noise on social media regarding favouritism and this idea that Mercedes may be developing a car in one direction as opposed to another.

“Please, as the technical director, can you explain how development of the car works and why there are sometimes these unlucky events for one driver, and shut it down once and for all?”

How James Allison responded to George Russell accusations

Toto Wolff clearly regards Antonelli as a generational talent but both he and Russell are graduates of the Mercedes academy.

Social media scrutiny is inevitable when two drivers in the same team are fighting for the title. Still, Mercedes have evidently been rankled by the notion that they’re harming Russell’s chances and feel compelled to defend themselves.

Allison explained that, culturally and financially, the team have no inclination whatsoever to favour one driver, unless the other is mathematically out of title contention and fighting a rival team.

“I doubt very much whether it will shut anything down once and for all!” he said. “People are very invested in the people that they support and they want their driver to prosper above all others.

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“If you ever wanted that feeling of favouritism… to understand where it sits on that side, you’d need to come and work in our team. You would instantly be imbued with the culture of that team and you would understand how utterly alien that thought is to anyone with the team.

“When we hear it, it’s like we’re hearing another language. It’s like an argument you can never win because both sides of it are just completely divorced from one another. It is in all of our interests that both our drivers prosper, and actually we’re ambivalent about which one is better than the other.

“We want a one-two in every race, and we don’t care the order. The only point where we would start to have an opinion is if one driver is mathematically incapable of winning a championship, and the other driver is in a fight with a third-party driver.

“At that point, the team has a right to an opinion. Up until that point, we just want both our players to be up there every single race.

“Our main championship is the constructors’ championship, not the drivers’ championship. If we’re lucky enough to win a bonus, we win it on the basis of the constructors’ position, not the drivers’. We don’t get anything for that.

“Everything we care about is constructors-oriented, and favouritism makes zero sense to us. We just want maximum points for both the drivers at all times.”