George Russell "truly believes" Mercedes will win a Formula 1 race in 2022 as their recovery continues.

The fall of the Brackley-based team was one of the biggest surprises from the first half of this season, as significant bouncing issues with their W13 have left them trailing Ferrari and Red Bull.

However, from the Spanish Grand Prix, Mercedes have been gradually closing the gap back to the front and in Hungary, Russell claimed the team's first pole of 2022 and the first of his F1 career.

Also Read:

• Russell admits Mercedes need to 'understand' Hungarian GP pole lap
• Red Bull/Mercedes "conflict" could return to F1 before end of 2022 - Verstappen
• Hamilton 'still on a mission' in F1 as he brushes off retirement talk

And commenting on the journey Mercedes has been on over the first 13 races, Russell admits it hasn't been easy but he's been impressed by how the team responded.

“You can’t cry and sulk about the overall performance,” he told the BBC. “That wouldn’t be productive and it wouldn’t go any faster.

“So you’ve got to go out and make the most of every tricky situation and be constructive, push the team in the right areas.

“The sort of journey we are on at the moment is exciting. As soon as we recognised we had a lot of challenges with this new car, we’ve truly just got down to the business of ‘how do we make this car go faster?’

“We are not trying to make it, let’s say, nicer to drive or anything. We just want to make it go as fast as possible. And what do we need to do to achieve that?

“We have, as a team, worked so hard. We’ve tried so many different things. Perhaps too many things at one point.

"It’s been a challenge to analyse absolutely everything we’ve done with the short period of time we’ve had.”

But with Mercedes now within touching distance of the front again, and expecting some benefit from a new technical directive being enforced from the Belgian GP, Russell is convinced he or teammate Lewis Hamilton will be victorious during the final run to Abu Dhabi. 

“I truly believe it,” he says. “The only thing we don’t know is what our rivals will bring to their cars.

"It’s relative gain, if we find one second of lap time and they find 0.8secs, they will still be ahead of us.

“But there’s no reason we can’t close that gap. Whether we will ever have the outright fastest car this year, I don’t think so. But there will definitely be times we can fight for a victory.

“We’ve had probably two occasions when we could have fought for victory – at Silverstone and potentially in Barcelona – if things had panned out slightly differently. And we are only making the car faster.

“We are a long way from maximum potential, so that’s why we have a bit of optimism.”