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George Russell believes Mercedes’ rivals are already trying to slow them down following their strong start to the season.

The team leads the constructors’ championship by 21 points from Ferrari having won all three races so far, including both parts of the sprint event in Shanghai. Last year’s champions McLaren are a distant third, already 80 points behind, as neither of their cars started the grand prix in China.

The FIA has already confirmed a forthcoming change to how it will monitor power units, which Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff fears could affect them. Russell said it’s to be expected that rival teams will try to provoke rules changes which disrupt Mercedes’ performance.

“That’s just how the sport goes, to be honest, it’s always been the case,” he said. “At the end of the day our team’s worked so hard to get ourselves in this position, and the best team should come out on top.

“We’ve obviously had four years of struggle. There have been two other teams in those four years who have dominated and won, so just because we’re back on top I don’t think it’s quite right that somebody or everybody’s trying to slow us down, especially when you’re two races into a big old season.”

He expects “things will change” between the teams as the season unfolds. “We’ve already seen [that] Red Bull was overweight, from some things we saw in the press last week,” he said. “McLaren haven’t brought an upgrade to the car, they’re still running their Bahrain package. So we shouldn’t forget these things.

“We do have an advantage right now but I think we’ve just really hit the ground running and we’ve done a great job and we hope it continues but there’s no guarantee.”

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Further questions were raised over Mercedes’ adjustable front wing which appeared to close more slowly than the rear wing element during the Chinese Grand Prix. However Russell indicated the behaviour is not intended, does not confer a performance advantage and the team is trying to stop it from happening.

“It wasn’t intentional and it’s not an advantage, for sure,” he said. “It’s actually a problem, so it’s something we’re trying to solve.

“It isn’t a straightforward solution, but there is definitely no advantage to that, because when we brake the front wing is still open. Obviously Kimi [Antonelli] had the lock-up [in the grand prix], I think this was a contribution [from] the front wing, so it is definitely not intentional.”

“It is very challenging for the front wing because if you compare it with the rear wing, when it starts to close you have the wind to help the rear wing to close,” he explained. “The front wing has to battle against the wind and you need a lot of pressure.

“I don’t know if we don’t have enough, but it isn’t easy to bring the wing up when you’re driving 300[kph] on the straight.”

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