Russell leading the way as Mercedes keep calm and carry on

SUZUKA, Japan - Mercedes continued with their quiet progress in the new Formula One season at the Japanese Grand Prix on Friday with George Russell among the frontrunners on the opening day at the Suzuka circuit.

Russell is third in the drivers standings after finishing third in Australia and China, while Italian rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli has backed up his teammate with a fourth and a sixth place.

Even if they are clearly not yet matching the pace of the McLarens, the start has been encouraging after a few seasons of maddening inconsistency.

Its been a lot calmer than the last few years, mainly because the car is what we intended it to be, Andrew Shovlin, the teams Trackside Racing Engineer, told reporters on Friday.

It hasnt really got the vices that weve had in a couple of previous years and thats down to doing good work over the winter.

Theres clearly a gap to McLaren that we need to chip away at, but that looks more like just a normal development race that we need to get stuck into rather than trying to get on top of any of the handling vices that weve had.

Russell won his second and third races last year as the junior partner to Lewis Hamilton but has stepped up as the senior driver this year after the departure of the seven-times world champion to Ferrari.

Hes very calm, Shovlin said. He seems very confident. Hes done a great job in the first two races, so thats been really encouraging. He just seems to be very relaxed in his position in the team now and hes just going about getting the points.

Mercedes opted against bringing in a more experienced driver to replace Hamilton and Shovlin said Russell, now in his seventh season in