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George Russell said Mercedes is “certainly not ahead of” McLaren and Ferrari, which prompted Lando Norris to say: “if he thinks we’re strong, we’re going to think he’s strong”.
McLaren and Ferrari had a very good showing during the three-day 2022 Barcelona Pre-Season Test Session, so much so that George Russell said they were looking “very fast”, adding that Mercedes is “certainly not ahead” of them.
This prompted McLaren’s Lando Norris to jokingly imply that George was playing mind games.
“George obviously topped the timesheets [in the morning session of Day 3], so if he thinks we’re strong, we’re going to think he’s strong,” Lando said.
When Russell was asked if Mercedes was indeed playing mind games, he (naturally) denied it.
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“I can’t be bothered with mind games, it’s too much effort,” the Briton said.
“No, there are no mind games. We’re just working on our own programme and, to be honest, it is absolutely unrepresentative what we’ve seen during testing.
“You know who is probably in the top half, and you know who’s in the bottom half. But when it comes to qualifying you’ve got tenths of a second splits between [cars], which is the equivalent of five kilos worth of fuel.
“So yeah, totally unrepresentative. Things will probably look very different with the development by the time we get to Bahrain.
“Maybe Lando is playing mind games, but we’re not,” Russell concluded.
