Part 1: Nico Hulkenberg, Valtteri Bottas and George Russell.

Q: George, why don't we start with you. A lot has changed in Formula 1 this year. Just how confident are you and Mercedes feeling ahead of this first race?
George Russell: Well, I think there's just an element of the unknown, excitement going into the first race. I think it's been a much better pre-season than we've had over the last four years. There are no items on the car that have been of major worry to us. Everything's working as expected, correlation is good, simulator correlation is good, and they are things that we've failed with over the last four years, so regardless of the stopwatch, things are working out as we hope.

Q: You mentioned unknowns. Just how many unknowns are there as we go into race one?
GR: There's a huge amount. I think there's a lot of discussions around race starts - a challenging topic. There are a lot of hurdles. I think you can get tripped up by any small error, so there's no time to relax during a race, during qualifying, pit stops. Things that once were quite straightforward parts of racing are now very complicated. However, to this point now, I think we've done the most amount of preparation possible. We're feeling in a good place. However, I'm sure, new track things might be different.

Q: Many of your rivals have you down as the title favourite. What do you make of that?
GR: Not a lot, really. It doesn't change anything. I think there's a lot of chat around us, Mercedes, and take it as a compliment, I guess. However, once the helmet's on and the visor's down, you're just flat out and you don't really think about any of this additional noise. Just take it race by race and see how we go.

Q: Alright, thank you for that. Good luck to you. Valtteri, let's come to you now. You have a huge amount of Formula 1 experience. Just how different is your new challenge with Cadillac to anything you've experienced before?
Valtteri Bottas: For sure it's very different. I think it's quite unique to be in a situation that you're starting with a new team in the sport. It doesn't really happen every day, so yeah, very unique. It's been hard work, lots of problem solving, but we've already made great progress and really hats off to the whole team being here ready for race one, which I think already is incredible. So, looking forward to this journey. It's only the start of it now.

Q: You've made great progress, as you say. What objectives have you set yourself and the team for 2026?
VB: Progress. That's the number one thing. We need to get better from the start of the year to the end of the year, which I hope we will. Like I said, we've had hard work already, but the hard work continues going ahead. With the new power units, with the new cars, it's the same kind of for everyone, but we have been building everything from scratch, so we need to keep going, keep getting better in all the areas.

Q: And on a personal note, you had to sit out 2025 as a reserve driver. Have you been feeling a little bit rusty behind the wheel?
VB: I haven't actually. Felt alright. Got plenty of testing, much more testing than normally you get before the season, and I think those few test days I had last year helped keep a bit of a feeling. But I have to say, actually, a few things are different. Like, I never expected to be actually kind of happy to be in a press conference after one year off. It's like, it's not bad. So yeah, you have a different perspective now.

Q: Long may that continue, Valtteri. Thank you very much. Nico, let's come to you. It's another new project for you with Audi. How are things progressing from your point of view?
Nico Hulkenberg: We'll see this weekend now. We get the first read and pointer. Pre-season's been okay. I think we made good progress. At the same time, still a lot of room for improvement in many areas. Still a young team, especially on the power unit side, obviously, and the only team out there with our package. Melbourne, it's a great track, very different from Bahrain, so I think that could mix things up a little bit. But we do it for the first time in anger with these new cars, quali, especially the race on Sunday. I think it could be interesting.

Q: Can you describe the ambition inside the team? Just what does success look like for you guys this year?
NH: Well, I think it's about also to progress. Where we start is where we start, but then to grow over the time of the year, to improve, to work on the package. Of course, we want to be competitive, we want to score points. What that means in numbers obviously we don't know, having not done any race weekend running yet, but I think the progression and how we look throughout the year, that's very important.

Questions From The Floor

Q: (David Croft - Sky Sports F1) Welcome back, gents. Ninety-one days since we last went racing, it's good to get going again. And Valtteri, as you're happy to be in a press conference, we're loving you being here. And as George is far too modest to admit that he is the favourite, who are your top three, with all due respect to the Cadillac drivers, for the Drivers' Championship this year?
VB: You know, that this is so hard to say when we haven't done a single race, we've only done testing. Every team is bringing probably different parts to Race 1, so even teams, it seems like impossible to say. But if I have to get something now, I'm going to say Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso, and George Russell, because I think they were sandbagging. So, they're going to beat Aston at the very end in Abu Dhabi.

Q: (Nelson Valkenburg - Viaplay) As last year was a season full of rookies, it seems that this year might be a season where experience counts, a season for golden oldies: Nico, Valtteri, and maybe George if you feel experienced enough. How important is being experienced this season?
NH: We're about to find out, I guess. But I wouldn't - experience is nice to have, but it doesn't guarantee anything. You still need to always find the throttle pedal, feel comfortable and confident in the car. I think it's just about learning, adapting quickly in these early stages of the season where everything is still so new. I think the learning curve of every driver and team is going to be huge, so I wouldn't just bank and sit on the experience and expect that to sort everything out for yourself.

VB: Yeah, like Nico said, I think it definitely helps, but it doesn't guarantee anything. But I think for us in our team we have two experienced drivers and I think it is a good thing for a new team. Me and Checo both have been in different teams, we've seen what kind of works, what kind of doesn't, so I think that's going to probably help us.

GR: Yeah, I mean, I still feel pretty young, so I don't know if I'm in the category yet, but there's a lot of youngsters on the grid. But like the guys said, there's so much different now. There are arguments that say being experienced is good, there's other arguments saying not have the experience and going in with an open mind and no previous experience of how it used to be is also good. But at the end of the day the fundamentals are still the same: you've still got to go flat out around the corners and the fastest driver will come out on top.

Q: (Mariana Becker - TV Globo) From what you had to learn, you're still learning, as you just said, George. What's a new skill that you have to have to drive these cars, or which skill you have to develop much more than you used to, because this is completely different? You have to have other kinds of skills, or more kinds of skills?
GR: I think we all work very hard on the technical side. Even in years gone by you focused a lot on the tyres or on the simulator or set-up, how to get the most out of it. Now there's just some added complexity of learning more about the engine and how the battery works on different tracks, how the power unit, how the race starts, with the turbos, work. So, I wouldn't really say it's a skill set necessarily, it's just you're learning new procedures. And I reckon by a couple of races in these procedures will be quite ingrained within us all and we'll be talking about it much less.

VB: I think biggest difference and learning will be probably while racing, managing the battery. Where you use the deployment, how you strategise your move, whether it's about overtaking or defending, and not running out of battery at the wrong time. I think that's going to be probably the biggest thing when we see this first race.

Q: (Rachel Brookes - Sky Sports F1) It follows on from that actually: it's more to do with how much more work are you guys, do you think, you'll be having to do both in the car and outside of the car this season, working more with your race engineers, studying every track as though it's completely new again, and how much impact do you think as a driver you'll be able to have? Is it more this year on the performance because of all the extra work you're going to have to do? Nico, let's start with you.
NH: I think the work in the car is probably similar. It's learning by doing, and then as we go there's still a lot of unknowns, a lot of question marks. But I think as a driver you always have quite a central and significant role with how you do things, how you operate, how you feedback to the team, which direction you steer into. So, no doubt it's going to be intense and it's going to be busy, and especially these early couple of races are probably a bit more intense.

Q: (Luke Smith - The Athletic) Valtteri, you say you're not feeling rusty, but has getting back into the swing of an F1 pre-season and then the anticipation this weekend - has it given you, I guess, a different perspective on what you were missing last year? Do you appreciate F1 that little bit more, having been away from racing and now returning?
VB: Absolutely. Having one year of not racing, you definitely appreciate everything about this sport more, and being on the grid is a different feeling. So yeah, like I said, even the press conference doesn't feel that bad today, but ask me in Abu Dhabi. But yeah, I definitely have a better perspective of the sport and will appreciate it much more than I did two years ago, so hopefully that will help me.