Russell ended the day leading a Mercedes one-two from team-mate Kimi Antonelli and 0.785 seconds quicker than the first driver not in a Mercedes, Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar.
Russell said: “We knew we had a fast car beneath us. I don’t think we ever anticipated it to be this fast, but Max wasn’t there.
“We had him down as our top rival and if you look at his pace difference historically over the last seven years to his team-mate, you would have expected him to be in that mix as well.
“I think it was a bit of a perfect storm.”
There may be a significant element of truth to that, but there is no doubt that Mercedes have the fastest car and that they are going to take some beating for a while.
McLaren also have a Mercedes engine but their fastest driver, Oscar Piastri in fifth, was more than 0.8secs slower than Russell.
Most of McLaren’s time loss was on the long ‘straight’ run between Turns Six and Nine of the Albert Park circuit. Mercedes were simply able to deploy more energy along there – because they arrived at Turn Six with their battery more highly charged.
Team principal Andrea Stella said that the Mercedes was also faster in most of the corners but added: “How you exploit these power units to the best of their potential, this moves quite a lot of lap time.”
Why can McLaren not compete in this way yet? Because Mercedes are the works team. They built the engine, so for now have a more complete understanding of how it works.
Mercedes’ advantage is not just in power-unit management, however. They have also built a very good car.
Stella said: “Mercedes are quick in the corners, not only in the straights. There are a few corners in which we can compete with them, but overall they are faster in the grip-limited sections.”
But he added that this could also be partly to do with engine usage.
“What we see is that whenever we kind of maximise the power unit, somehow everything sort of works better and you go faster in the corners as well,” he said.
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