While everyone was focused on how McLaren and Ferrari would fare in Australia, Mercedes completely went under the radar to secure a solid result. George Russell carried over his top-notch form of last season to once again secure a podium finish when a front-running car — this time, Oscar Piastri — slipped down the order.
“They finished third and fourth and guess what, nobody noticed,” former Haas boss Guenther Steiner said on The Red Flags podcast. Despite rarely being on the broadcast, both Russell and his new Mercedes teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli did put on a brilliant performance to secure a 3-4 finish.
Russell has developed this tendency to be there at the front consistently and inherit a podium or the win just in case someone from the top three crashes or retires, case in point: Baku 2024 and Austria 2024. In Melbourne too, he drove a flawless race — after qualifying a brilliant fourth — in treacherous conditions to finish on the final step of the podium.
On the other hand, Antonelli made an outstanding recovery drive to finish fourth after only qualifying a disappointing 16th on his debut race weekend. Still, the Silver Arrows won’t be content with this showing relative to McLaren, who are basically their customer team. Steiner also stated the same referencing how team principal Toto Wolff would’ve felt.
He stated, “If you speak with Toto, for sure he is not happy about it”. Even last season, the Brackley outfit finished fourth in the Constructors’ standings while McLaren won the championship. That said, Steiner believes Mercedes’ performance at Albert Park needs to be put into context given where they stand in the pecking order at the moment.
P3 Kicking off ‘25 with a podium finish feels good. Tricky conditions today, well done team and congratulations to Kimi on an amazing recovery pic.twitter.com/CSge34Kbnu
— George Russell (@GeorgeRussell63) March 16, 2025
The Italian-American explained how rarely anyone believed that Mercedes would be able to challenge for the podium in Australia after the kind of underwhelming pre-season testing they had in comparison to the likes of both McLaren and Ferrari.
However, the hosts of the podcast were fair to quiz Steiner about Mercedes’ underperformance to McLaren as no works outfit wants to finish behind their customer team. While Wolff certainly will not be happy about this fact, he has always been proud that Mercedes continues to partner with the strongest teams.
Wolff explained how Mercedes benefits by partnering with strong customer teams
One of the reasons why most teams prefer to partner with Mercedes compared to other engine suppliers is that the Silver Arrows believe in “transparent and equal supply to all customer teams in the sport”.
After signing a deal with McLaren to continue as their engine suppliers until the end of the 2030 season, Wolff explained in 2023 how providing a level playing field to all their customer teams in return benefits them.
“It has been a cornerstone of our motorsport strategy to work with strong customer teams,” the Austrian had said. “This has many advantages — it gives a clear competitive benchmark, accelerates our technical learning, and strengthens the overall F1 business case for Mercedes-Benz”.
He added that his and Mercedes’ goal is to see all 10 teams be capable of fighting for the podiums one day. This vision of the Silver Arrows is perhaps the reason why Alpine also decided to ditch their indigenous Renault engines and sign a power unit deal with Mercedes for 2026 and beyond.
