Mercedes is still trying to understand why George Russell continued to face power issues at the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix, held on Sunday (19). Even after adapting his driving style, the Briton continued to lose time to teammate Kimi Antonelli on the straights.
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During practice sessions at Spa-Francorchamps, there was a clear difference in top speed between Russell’s and Antonelli’s cars, while in qualifying the disadvantage appeared on a smaller scale: Antonelli took pole position and Russell finished fourth. After qualifying, Russell revealed his frustration with the situation and stated that Mercedes’ priority in the last few hours had been to investigate straight-line performance:
“All my focus in the last 36 hours has been on straight-line speed. I haven’t been focusing on setup, tires, or anything else, because we’re all trying to figure out what’s going on,” he told Motorsport.com.
The driver also stated that he found no explanations for the loss of performance even with the accelerator fully pressed: “Even on my last lap, for some reason, I lost another tenth and a half compared to myself, just on the straight. You look at the steering wheel and see yourself losing speed when you’re flat out on the straight. You feel helpless. We don’t know what’s going on. I don’t think it’s the power unit, to be honest. But there’s something slowing us down on the straights.”
Mercedes’ deputy technical director, Simone Resta, explained that the team is still trying to identify all the factors involved in the power deployment deficit in Russell’s car. According to him, the investigation began after Silverstone, when differences were found between the two cars.
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“We had some issues with the deployment on George’s car that we really need to understand and fully resolve for the next round,” Resta stated.
Mercedes believed that one of the main causes was related to driving style, and Russell worked to adapt before the Belgian round. However, the change did not completely eliminate the difference. “George studied this extensively and managed to change and adapt for Spa, but even so, we can still see some difference in deployment between these two cars,” Resta explained.
The director added that the team is still learning about the new Formula 1 regulations and intends to solve the problem before the Hungarian GP: “We are working with a completely new set of regulations, we are only in the tenth race with these regulations, and we are still struggling to understand each of the contributors. We are not the only ones in this situation, because we can see that many teams are still learning and adapting to these new regulations.”
In addition to Russell’s specific difficulty, Mercedes also faced a different problem at the start in Spa. Both cars ran out of electrical energy on the Kemmel straight after reaching the energy recovery limit at the exit of Turn 1. Resta confirmed that the problem was caused by a software failure.
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