George Russell left the qualifying session for the Formula 1 Belgian GP with more questions than answers. The Mercedes driver stated that a ‘serious problem’ is affecting his car after once again suffering a significant loss of performance on the straights at Spa-Francorchamps.
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Although he recorded the fourth-best time, Russell finished more than half a second behind teammate Kimi Antonelli, who took pole position. With the penalty applied to Lando Norris, the Briton is expected to inherit third place on the starting grid, but that did not ease his concern.
According to Russell, the difficulty had already been noticed at the British GP. Initially, Mercedes believed the problem was related to the brakes, but that hypothesis was discarded. Later, the team and the driver himself began to consider that the loss of performance could be linked to his driving style.
“I convinced myself that there was something in my driving style, but now we are very confident that this is not the case and that there is a serious problem happening,” he said. The Briton revealed that he dedicated the last 36 hours exclusively to trying to understand the origin of the loss of speed on the straight line.
Russell explained that the situation has partially improved since Friday: “On Friday, I was losing eight tenths on the straights. Today, I lost four tenths, so it’s a step in the right direction,” he said. Still, the Briton described the situation as frustrating, especially when seeing on the steering wheel that he continues to lose speed even with the accelerator fully pressed.
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“When you see on the steering wheel that you are losing speed on a full straight, you feel powerless. We don’t know what is happening.” The British driver believes that the power unit is not responsible, but admitted that something in the car is compromising performance.
Despite the problems, Russell was satisfied with his lap in the qualifying session. He highlighted that, in the twisty sections of Spa, he was even faster than Antonelli at several points on the circuit: “In the corners, it looks like a normal fight for pole. On the straights, it doesn’t,” he summed up.
Without an immediate solution, the Briton hopes that Mercedes can find answers quickly: “I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m praying for Budapest,” Russell concluded, making it clear that the team still has an important challenge to solve in the upcoming stages of the season.
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