George made a strong start to the 2022 Formula One season as he ended both practice sessions in P4 ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Making full use of the first practice session of the season, George immediately took to the Bahraini track on a set of Medium compound Pirelli tyres and delivering a 1.36.584 to place him into P7.

Debris on the track caused an early red flag and halted all track action, sending all the drivers back into the pits until the track was cleared.

Taking to the track on a set of Soft tyres, George put in a 1.34.629 to move himself into P4 where he ended FP1.

Moving into the evening FP2 session, George and the team opted to run the Medium tyres first in the session with the Brit slotting himself into P5 on his first run with a 1.34.828 lap time.

Switching to the Soft tyres for the second half of the session, George improved on his lap time to briefly move into P3 with a 1.32.529 but ended the session in P4.

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George Russell – Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One™ Team Driver

It's all about lap time and we're certainly not where we want to be. We made progress on solving some of our issues, but the pace isn't there at the moment. We need to go over the data tonight to understand where we're struggling with the car. We've got lots of work ahead of us to get the car where we want it but if any team can, we can. It was windier today than last week, you're running at different times of the day, plus we're trying lots of things on the car to improve performance, so there's so many factors for us to weigh up. We are truly throwing everything at it to unlock the performance which we think is there but we're struggling to tap into at the moment. We need to go away, do our analysis and make the best of this situation.

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The final practice session of the weekend will take place at 12pm GMT on Saturday, March 19.

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