Russell unleasﷺhed some encouraging signs of increasing competitiveness from Mercedes’ W13 challenger as he was just pipped to the benchmark time in first practice, before leading Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by a tenth of a sಞecond in FP2.

It marked unfamiliar territory for the once-dominant world champions amid what has been a woefu꧟l start to F1’s new rule꧒s era, with Mercedes lagging nearly a full second behind Ferrari and Red Bull in the opening four races. 

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But Mercedes sꦆent a statement with much-improved pace on the first day of running for F1’s inaugural race at the Florida city, and the team’s impressive showing was not lost on rival Red Bull team boss Christian Horner. 

“I have said since pre-season it is only a matter of t💞ime before [Mercedes] sort themselves out,” Horn🐈er told Sky. “That is starting to happen.

“The🐠y are getting on top of their issues and looking competitive.”

What is behind Mercedes’ improved showing? 

The eye-catching performance has coincided with ✅Mercedes introducing their first significant upgrades of the season in the United States. 

Mercedes debuted a lower-drag rear wing and a revised front wing on both Russell and Lewis Hamilton’s cars in Miami as part of a push to get on top of the porpoising that have severely afflicted the team’s perform🏅ance. 

After first practice, Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin acknowledged it had been “an encour♊aging start to the weekend”.

Explaining the updates to Sky, Shovlin said the new front wing en🐻dplate gi𒉰ves “more downforce for the same drag and the rear wing’s a more efficient wing than the one we’ve been running. 

“So you’ve ༺seen at previous, low-drag tracks we’ve trimmed our wing away. This one’s designed for this downforce. Both of those together are useful and those are items that when we make them, we re-make them lighter, so it’s helping with getting weight out of the car.

“We’re always tryinꦿg to get weight out of the car, we were still overweight. And it seems to be working reasonably well.”

Track temperatures reached more than𝄹 50 degrees Celsius at times on Friday and Shovlin admitted the conditions likely boosted Mercedes’ performance after the team was hampered by tyre warm-up issues last time out in Italy. 

“In Imola we were struggling with [tyre] warm-up, the big thing here is overheating,” he explained. “Whether that’s𝔍 shifted us in the right direction I don’t know.

“But we won’t get excited about where we are here, we know that we should have im✃proved the car, but we know we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Askedꩵ if the team is back in the fight at the front of the grid, Shovlin said: “We’re not going to say that just yet. 

“Obviously getting into Q3 is the minimum expectation for this team but we kn🌊ow that we had a long road to go along and we’re just try♔ing to do that step-by-step.”

Mercedes drivers not ‘getting too carried away’ 

Russell, who sits fourth in the drivers’ championship, described Mercedes’ day as the “most productive Friday we’ve had” but conceded the team do not fully understand their strong st👍art to the weekend. 

“We don’t really understand it to be honest, why we sort of hit the ground running,” hꦛe said.  

“We always knew ahead of this weekend that the conditions should suit us better because we have been struggling a lot with tyre warm-up. ♐;

“But this is the first real hot race of the season, so for sure that’s played a big factor. The car is working well, but it’s only Friday, so not getting to𓆏o carried away.”

In the other car, Hamilton ended th�⛎�e day fourth, two-tenths off his young Mercedes teammate, who he also trails by 21 points and three places in the championship. 

The seven-♛time💯 world champion downplayed the impact of the new parts Mercedes have brought to Miami and stressed it is too early in the weekend to draw any firm conclusions. 

“It’s just practice, so everyone’s doing something different in😼 practice, I don’t think everyone’s shown their true pace,” he said.  

"It feels similar to me. I think we seem to be quicker here and later on they were expꩲꦆlaining to us we definitely have improved in some way. 

“🎃I’m not sure where that is, but there are definitely positive e🥀lements to take from today.” 

Hamilton admitted he is currently struggling🉐 to tame Mercedes’ troublesome W13 as Russell continues to hold the early upper hand at the Brackley-based squad. 

“I’m still struggling with the car🦩, George looked great out there, but we’re trying a lot of different things but we’ll converge and hopefullyဣ improve.”

Despite making visible impꩵrovements, both Mercedes drivers reported that the team have not been able to completely cure the high-frequency bouncing that has plagued their car in 2022. 

“I t♏hink we know that it will always be there, but maybe it’s working at a lower [ride-height] ❀range compared to where we were previously,” Russell explained. 

“On the high-fuel run I was feeling it and it didn't seem to be any better, but if we can manage t⛎o do that with the car lower to t𒈔he ground then obviously we seek the rewards. 

"But as I said, you generally have races that go in your favour, some races that go against you. I th🌠ink Imola obviously wasn’t a strong circuit for us, but so far from what we see, the car is working well around Miami.”